From: "Geo." 

"Robert Comer"  wrote in message
news:406ef039$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> Maybe, but wasn't some other thing mentioned about blocking web bugs --
> seperate from the read as text option?

Yes, it says this:

Don’t Download External HTML Content Detailed description
This Outlook Express feature helps users to avoid getting repeated spam
mailings by preventing the user from unknowingly validating their e-mail
address to spam originators. Businesses that use spam as a marketing
technique typically include references to images that reside on their Web
servers inside the e-mail message. Some of these spam e-mail messages
contain single pixel images that are not visible to the recipient of the
e-mail so that the recipient will not be aware that there is any content
that is malicious. When the user opened an e-mail that contains the image,
previous versions of Outlook Express automatically contacted the Web server
to download and display the images. When the request for the image was made
to the Web server, it could ascertain that a spam e-mail message was
received by an active e-mail account, which validated the e-mail address in
the spam originator’s mailing list. Now, when the Don’t Download External
HTML Content feature is enabled, the default behavior of Outlook Express
changes so that it does not contact the Web server to download external
content, which prevents the verification of the e-mail address with the
spam originator. This download behavior is configurable and is enabled by
default when you install Windows XP Service Pack 2.

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