Kelson wrote:
Tom Allison wrote:
Personally, I think HTML email should be outright discarded from the
start.
If you look at this arguement presented by the OP then it reinforces
the idea that most ascii is ham and most html is spam. Therefore,
reject delivery of all html based email. Or to be more succinct --
reject any MIME type of alternative content or html only content.
That would remove probably 90% of the spam in one shot.
Speaking from an ISP perspective:
I hate to break it to you, but most end users want some sort of
formatted mail. The days of all email being ASCII-only are over, just
as the days of all websites being text-only are over.
Speaking with my postmaster hat on, I agree: the days of ASCII-only are
over, and I, as a postmaster, must allow the flow of "cooked" mail
(HTML, Doc, graphics, etc.), and cannot force nor enforce "raw text" email.
Speaking with my "a sender and recipient of email" user hat on: I
couldn't give a rodent's posterior what other people do or don't want to
put in their email. By the time I see it, it's plain text, and if that
removes some essential content, that's the other person's problem for
having made a poor choice in the format of their message. I take no
responsibility for what they intended to send me.
Stepping back from both of those perspectives: I can't force other
people to any particular thing, and I don't want to. But they can't
force me to do any particular thing either. I'm going to read plain
text email, and sometimes look at attached images if I want to. I wont
stop you from sending me html-only, but I wont read it, either.
(in fact, earlier today, someone at work sent me a "please answer the
part in green" message, and I answered back "none of it was in green ...
probably because I filter out any non-plain-text components of the
email" ... still waiting for her to reply)
