Re: [PLUG] web access email adds html code in message

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

In re: various comments that 99.9_% of mail readers can render HTML, 
even if the user chooses not to (like me) and that only stone-age email 
clients or ones you never heard of are a problem, that's not entirely true.

The ASCII digest of this list strips HTML.  If the message does not also 
contain plain text, what you get in the digest is:

--- sample digest ---
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: 
http://lists.netisland.net/pipermail/plug/attachments/20090827/27366f6c/attachment.htm
--- sample digest ---

But the URLs are always 404.  Ironically, the message does show up in 
plain text in the archive itself, e.g.: 
http://lists.netisland.net/archives/plug/plug-2009-08/msg00292.html

That makes it kind of hard to be helpful...


It also raises the issue of the incredible waste of bandwidth that HTML 
email causes all by itself, which is then compounded by the fact that as 
previously noted, 99.99_% of emails contain both HTML and plain text, 
thus at *least* doubling the size of every message.

As an aside, it's interesting how the plain text and HTML parts of lots 
of spam and phishing bear no resemblance to each other.  A good amount 
of spam and phishing don't even contain a plain text part, which becomes 
a handy way to nuke them.  Way to go Verizon for making your users look 
more like spam.

And yes, I'm one of the old curmudgeons who thinks HTML email is an 
abomination that should be nuked for orbit--it's the only way to be 
sure.  But we have certainly beaten this topic to death.  Again...

Later,
JP
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|      http://bashcookbook.com/
My Account, My Opinions     |=========|      http://www.jpsdomain.org/
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"Microsoft Tax" = the additional hardware & yearly fees for the add-on
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implemented self, while the overhead incidentally flattens Moore's Law.
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