Comments on: John Faughnan’s amazing Outlook hack (and why it matters)

By: best whitehat website online. HackTalk.net

best whitehat website online. HackTalk.net — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 23:21:24 +0000

best whitehat website online. HackTalk.net…

[...]John Faughnan’s amazing Outlook hack (and why it matters) « Jon Udell[...]…

By: Nettie

Nettie — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:38:47 +0000

Good points all around. Truly appirecaetd.

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:53:47 +0000

I am not a lawyer, but from what my friends in IT say the email archiving is done at the server level, not the client mailbox, so a copy of each email is silently sent to the archive system, rather than relying on the client mailbox to store the message (which would be prone to users deleting it by accident etc..)

From this, it would seem that you can go edit subject lines to your hearts content.

It is similar then to hitting reply, and editing the subject line, which is commonly done, if occasionally overused.

By: Nigel Rowe

Nigel Rowe — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:02:21 +0000

If someone edits Outlook Subject lines like this, the change is not carried across to the actual message header which can still be viewed. Changes of all sorts can be made to Outlook messages, including the message text and forging headers. All you have to do is export the message to Outlook Express or another mail program that allows messages to be exported as standard RFC822 text format. You edit the message in Notepad (or whatever) and then import back into Outlook Express and then Outlook. Voila, a forged message saying or modifying whatever was originally said. Scary stuff! But it’s always been present.

By: Julien Couvreur

Julien Couvreur — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:53:10 +0000

I use this trick occasionally. To answer some of the concerns above, my understanding is that the original title is still retained.
I don’t remember what happens when you reply to a thread after modifying the title.

By: Eoin O'Riordan

Eoin O'Riordan — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:21:08 +0000

“The kludge I use in my Gmail is forwarding the email to myself and modifying that subject line” Michael Shook.

This is one that I use, but more for the fact that you can add extra relevant information (e.g. a description or a list of key words not covered by the labels) to the message box as well.

This makes searching for the specific email later on much easier. The functionality and design of Gmail seems more slanted towards search anyway so this seems better than just changing the Subject Line.

By: links for 2008-07-22 « Talkabout

links for 2008-07-22 « Talkabout — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 03:57:20 +0000

[...] John Faughnan’s amazing Outlook hack (and why it matters) “Now, why would you want to do such a thing? It’s a defensive strategy. The message entitled “Re: Next week” probably ought to be entitled something like “Consensus reached among A, B, and C on issue X for project Y.” Which title would you rathe (tags: judell podcast microcontent kr ontology medical see comment hack outlook) [...]

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:47:45 +0000

> I’m not really that wonderful.

Sure you are. And as a token of gratitude, here’s this side-splitter from our trip to England:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonudell/2684919117/

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:46:40 +0000

> Hopefully you cannot edit the text as well!

This has turned into an interesting question, actually. Do such changes propagate back to the system of record, or not? If they’re only part of the personal archive, no worries.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:39:58 +0000

Hopefully you cannot edit the text as well!

Our state (guess which one) has “Government in the Sunshine” laws which makes most e-mail (some exceptions) public record – and you wouldn’t want your government changing the records about what they planned, said, or did, would you?

By: The Endeavour » Blog Archive » Outlook hack: fixing useless subject lines

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:53:18 +0000

[...] John Udell pointed out today that Microsoft Outlook lets you edit the subject line on mail you’ve received, changing it to the subject line you wish the sender had used. So rather than maintaining a mental dictionary mapping irrelevant email subject lines to what they mean to you, you could just edit the subject line. ? X [...]

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:56:05 +0000

> functions Eudora has performed for nearly
> 20 years.

I don’t actually know how long Outlook has had this feature, maybe quite a while. But what interests me is whether or not it’s known, and if so, used, and if so, by how many.

In your experience, are Eudora users aware of this function and inclined to use it?

By: Joe Clark

Joe Clark — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:40:33 +0000

Wow. I wonder how many more years it will take Outlook users to “hack” their systems to perform functions Eudora has performed for nearly 20 years.

Next up: Learning not to top-post. Too difficult for Outlook users/

By: John Faughnan

John Faughnan — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:36:41 +0000

Hi Jon,

Wow, you are too kind. I’m not really that wonderful.

We should probably mention that I publish all my blogs under the pseudonym of John Gordon (Gordon is my middle name).

I used to get some curious work conversations with people who googled my name …

As to losing the subject line my sender gave the email — true enough, but in all my years of doing this I’ve never missed the sender’s subject line.

Not once!

Sure, they might miss it, but once I get the email it’s part of my knowledge base.

Interesting from a forensics perspective of course …

By: Rodd

Rodd — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:56:51 +0000

I confess to being a Outlook subject line editor (for as long as I can remember using the application).
I have also been known to change the subject on long email threads, particularly when the original email title doesn’t describe the conversation :-)