Hallo Tony, On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 11:02:28 +0200GMT (13-6-2004, 11:02 +0200, where I live), you wrote:
T> Damn! Exposed as a newbie again... :) Don't worry, that'll pass over the years. T> It makes me wonder why TB! doesn't fully render HTML then. T> I mean the HTML with little red crosses where pictures should be. Generally that's because the pictures aren't sent with the message. TB only shows attached pictures. T> I remember something written about this somewhere. (not sure where) T> It was partly security related. But if TB! renders it's pages with T> it's own engine I see no danger fetching the pics online. It's rather unpleasant when you're using a dial-up connection to have your mail client dialing out while the only thing you want to do is reading locally stored messages. It's a security risk. When you're using a browser you set your permissions and restrictions accordingly to what you want. But when you're using a mail client, you set restrictions a bit differently because of the difference between used protocols. Now when your mail client starts behaving like a browser.... On-line pictures can be used to check whether you're reading your mail (display the linked picture on screen) or not. That's a privacy issue. Apart from that, even though TB doesn't use IE for HTML rendering, it doesn't mean that its HTML rendering engine is bug free. It's those bugs that are additional safety risks. Restricting TB to embedded HTML without opening any links to the evil bad world outside of your computer is the best safety precaution. The final point, TB enables you to open the message in IE (or whatever browser you're using), so you can see on-line pictures. But because you didn't see them in TB, you're aware of them being on-line and thus you know that there might be some safety issues. T> Many non-spam newsletters come in HTML format nowadays Though they come in HTML that doesn't mean they have to point to on-line pictures. On-line pictures are a terrible waste of bandwidth. Suppose that every message is read (viewed) twice. That's not unreasonable for an average. Embedded pictures have to be downloaded once and on-line pictures have to be downloaded twice (causing traffic for both the sender and the recipient). Therefore it's rather shortsighted for a sender to use on-line pictures. Considering that most of those senders have qualified IT employees, you might expect them to use embedded pictures, unless they're having other intentions and then TB's behaviour is no more than prudent. -- Groetjes, Roelof Disclaimer: Any opinion stated in this message is not necessarily shared by my budgies or rabbits. ________________________________________________ Current version is 2.11.02 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
