tracing email addresses with a web bug

[yorktown]

I wanted to add a tracker code in an email that was being sent out. However, I want to know the actual email address that opens it.

I looked at the code at the Iron Geek site.

color="#0000CC"<?php   

header("Content-type: image/png");
$im = imagecreatefrompng("1by1.PNG");
imagecolortransparent ( $im,imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 255, 255));
imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);
$hostname=gethostbyaddr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
$QUERY_STRING = preg_replace("%[^/a-zA-Z0-9@,_]%", '', $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
//Write Log
    $filename = 'webbug.csv';
    $fp = fopen($filename, "a");
    $string ='"'.$QUERY_STRING.'","'
        .$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].'","'
        .$hostname.'","'
        .$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'].'","'
        .$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'].'","'
        .date("D dS M,Y h:i a").'"'."\n";
    $write = fputs($fp, $string);
    fclose($fp);
//end Write Log
?>

The $string shows the referrer and the IP, but I want the actual email address. How do I get that?

Thanks in advance.

[bpat1434]

You really can't with that code. You'd have to devise something more to the point and track it that way. Instead of just calling an image, you'd need to call an image with a URL that looked like:

http://www.domain.tld/myCustomImage.php?id=_________________________________

Now, you have a few options. You can either hash the email address and store that in a database or you can put in the actual email address. Either way, when that image is requested, you need to send the image back to the browser, and write to the csv or even add a row to the database.

You can't do it with their code directly, you have to modify it.

[yorktown]

Yes, I think this is is....its on the same page in the link above

<img src="http://tux.irongeek.com/webbug.php?[e-mail]">
<img src="http://tux.irongeek.com/cgi-bin/webbug.cgi?[e-mail]">

So I would need to know the mail program being used to send mail out.

Example:

<img src="http://tux.irongeek.com/webbug.php?[[email]]">
<img src="http://tux.irongeek.com/cgi-bin/webbug.cgi?[[email]]">

----  On other systems ----

<img src="http://tux.irongeek.com/webbug.php?{email}">
<img src="http://tux.irongeek.com/cgi-bin/webbug.cgi?{emai}">

etc......

This would force the handler to populate the [[email]] field with the actual email address.

Please let me know if I am right.