(can you tell I'm avoiding Doing Some Work?)

I get emails from the clothes company Boden - sales and things - and this morning I got an email with the subject line "Save 20% off today" (and let's ignore the tautology in that phrase), but in the body of the email - a rather snappy, click-on-this display panel, not just text - it only said 15%. I clicked through and the website also said 15%.

I tweeted about it, using their Twitter handle, and half an hour later the website was updated. So full marks for them being on the ball for what I've decided to assume was a simple slip of the finger.

But then I realised that the email, in my Inbox, has changed too: the body of the email now says 20%, to match the subject line.

It's not a new, later, updated email: it's the original (still timed to before my original Tweet), and somehow they must have wiggled their way into my email and replaced it with a new image. The giveaway is that at above the main headline stuff it still says "If you can't see this email, please click here to get 15% OFF plus FREE delivery & returns until Thursday"

I hadn't realised that it was possible to change an email you'd already sent (though if you're submitting work, I'd suggest that that way madness lies...), and I'm wondering how they did it, and thinking there's scope for a story, too, though probably not one of mine, since my stories rarely get beyond carrier pigeon dates...

Emma

I'm not that techie, but is it possible that they didn't send you an actual email, but a link to their webpage or a page on the web that opened inside your email account?

Other than that, I've not nothing.

I'm SO not a techie, but I reckon it's cos the images themselves are not emailed, but downloaded from their website (I think this because my email prog is set NOT to download images, I have to actively tell it to, so I receive the Boden emails, but without any images until/unless I instruct it to download them).

I guess your images are set to auto-download, so when you opened the email it downloaded a new set of updated images.

I think (not sure) that if you'd opened the email while offline then you would have seen the old version that you downloaded previously...?

Tis all speculation on my part though, so I guess we will have to wait until a techie comes along to know for sure.

<Added>

which is basically wot Jenn said more succinctly!

my email prog is set NOT to download images, I have to actively tell it to, so I receive the Boden emails, but without any images until/unless I instruct it to download them

Mine too, and I had downloaded them when it cam in. So I assume that in a later automatic send-and-receive, my email programme must have received the new set, and changed the email...

Which I still find a bit weird - rather Harry Potter to have something you basically think is the equivalent of a letter suddenly change what it says...

yes - sort of the 21st century equivalent of invisible ink!

Emma

It's not so sinister as you fear. As Jenn suggests, the email simply contains a link to a web page. The email itself can be written in HTML (web code) which displays the message but which can also contain a link that is not displayed as a visible link. That link displays the web page. When the web page changes, what you see changes. Nothing has happened to the email on your computer. It's still looking at the same web address as before. That is what I imagine to be going on here.

Chris

Chris, yes, but it doesn't look like a web page - it's not a normal click-through, and it displays on my computer whether I'm online or not, and I don't need a web browser up. So at some point there must have been some more traffic between Boden and my email program, to get the new version showing. That's what I find faintly disconcerting - that they can change things in my inbox.

Emma

Emma

All the same, I'm sticking to my story! Firstly, your email program doesn't need you to have a web-browser open to display an HTML page, whether that page is on the web or on your computer. Secondly, when you view a page on the web, your computer usually stores a temporary copy of that page on your hard disk. When you now open the email without being connected to the internet, it will be looking at that temporary copy. You must have viewed the 20% version while you were connected at some time (otherwise you would never have seen it). What you are now looking at when unconnected is the most recent copy of that 20% version. On your hard disk you'll find folders called 'Temporary Internet Files' with thousands of files in them. It's may be somewhere in there or in some other folder with 'Temporary' or 'Cache' in the title.

Others may disagree but I think you'll find that's the explanation (unless of course the Beijing Ministry of Defence is involved!).

Don't worry about it. They are not accessing your email files.

Chris