Re: HTML arrogance

On 2025/12/16 8:42:47, Steve Hayes wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Dec 2025 10:07:30 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver"
> <[email protected]> wrote:

[R.Wieser original bit]

>> It's not just some "kid"; I've had companies that do same in emails.
>> Some even just say something like "we have tried to contact you in
>> words-and-pictures ..." in the plain-text part. The worst are ones where
>> their _system_ is sending two-part emails, but the person _sending_ them
>> has no idea that that's what's happening, and is unable to comprehend
>> when you try to explain. That's just about tolerable when it actually
>> works, but one large company (I think it was FindMyPast, a genealogy
[snip]

> 
> Most HTML-only emails are spam, or designed to look like spam. I

The odd spam - or, more accurately, phishing attempt - I've received
recently have been quite well-designed; the most recent being made to
look as if it was from DVLA (driver and vehicle licencing agency). [I
forwarded it to the usual phishing address.]

> sometimes get emails from banks and the like formatted to look as much
> like spam as possible, so I'm perpetually having to fish them out of
> spam queues -- they use lazy HTML, and other spammers tricks like
> one-pixel codes to let them know if you've read them.

Yes, my client - Thunderbird - doesn't fetch online contend unless I
authorise it, which I can do per sender, per source (so it can catch
stuff not from the sender), or per individual email. I rarely enable any
of those. (My previous client, Turnpike, didn't I think display - or
fetch - online content at all.)

> 
> My mail reader is setot read plain-text by default, and only to
> display HTML if there isn't a plain-text version. But it will not

Turnpike certainly was set that way; I think Thunderbird too.

> display "lazy HTML" -- ie parts of the message that are not part of
> the message, but have to be fetched from a remote web site. It just
> displays those as greyed-out blanks.

Indeed. (The worst are where what would be fetched are not text, but
images of text.)
> 
> This might annoy the whizz-kid web designers, but email is not a web
> page, and so far it has kept me safe from a lot of the malware that
> uses all those tricks. 
> 
Exactly. I think, these days, that (not showing it) is the default for
most email clients, but I guess enough people use ones where that is not
the case - or, turn it on - for it to be worth the spammers'/phishers'
while.
> 
Are such things - display online content - turned on by default in most
webmail interfaces, such as gmail? I guess most people are using those
these days.
> 
> 

-- 
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Viagra won't make you James Bond , but it will make you Roger Moore ..
(@robskiing on YouTube, 2023)