On Wed, 26 Sep 2001, Nick Simicich wrote:
> My personal feeling is that any e-mail client that automatically invokes
> remote urls of any sort, including img tags from e-mail that I'm looking at
> is essentially broken.
I agree entirely.
> It allows someone to track who is reading their mass [...] e-mail.
This is not just an abstract possibility, spammers routinly do this.
> Personally, I use an e-mail user agent with a lame, broken html renderer
> (Eudora 5.1) on purpose.
And I use Pine (for a variety of reasons, but including the fact that the
HTML rendering is safe from inline img snooping and JavaScript).
Going back to the original question, we are being asked about making a
mailing list do things that are quiet inappropriate for the vast majority
of lists.
I suppose that when people sign up for that list, they can get an
announcment that says,
"To view our slick announcments and brochures they way we would like you
to see them, please be sure to use an insecure, Internet-unfriendly
email program such as Outlook Express".
Alternatively, if there really really is a proper need for this kind of
thing (we've only been told that the "customer insists that there is a
need") then why not send the stuff out as PDF and ask all list members to
be sure to have installed a PDF viewer such as GSView, Xpdf or Acroread.
-j
--
Jeffrey Goldberg
I have recently moved, see http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/contact.html
Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice
