The real killer is HTML [LWN.net]

The real killer is HTML

Posted Jun 29, 2004 22:13 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1)
In reply to: The real killer is HTML by ssavitzky
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to graphical mail clients

"I categorically refuse to use a mail client that renders HTML by default -- why should I let every spammer in the universe know their mail got through?"

There are plenty of reasons to stay away from HTML mail, but this is not one of them. Most mailers which interpret HTML also provide an option to disallow the loading of external images, and most of them have that option set by default. So there should be no covert channels back to spammers.

(Log in to post comments)

The real killer is HTML

Posted Jul 1, 2004 4:40 UTC (Thu) by ssavitzky (subscriber, #2855) [Link]

"There are plenty of reasons to stay away from HTML mail, but this is not one of them."

I should probably have said something like "among other things..." -- as you say, there are plenty of reasons not to want HTML rendered by default. Yet another reason is spam filtering -- if a message has no text/plain component, or a totally incoherent block of random words, it's almost certain to be spam.

The real killer is HTML

Posted Jul 1, 2004 9:10 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Hotmail users often send HTML-only mail, I find :(

The real killer is HTML

Posted Jul 1, 2004 15:33 UTC (Thu) by ssavitzky (subscriber, #2855) [Link]

yet another reason :->

Luckily most of the hotmail users I correspond with can be taught how to turn it off. You're out of luck if you have to handle a lot of mail from strangers, of course.