I'm sure some of you have seen this topic before, and I don't want to
go into many of the issues involved in it. However, there is one
specific aspect of HTML email that everyone might accept is evil, and
perhaps it is not widely known. I'm bringing this up here, because
Runrev is one of the few companies that sends me HTML email.
If you have a browser that renders HTML text, then it is perfectly
possible for this email cient to be telling Spammers that the email
address they spammed is valid. All that is required is that one of
the hrefs in the email that points to an image on a server (could
even be to 1 pixel image), should actually invoke the equivalent of a
CGI/Servlet/whatever, and pass the email address to which they sent
the spam back to the server as a parameter. The server then
processes that request (including recording that your email address
is valid) and returns the image requested. I know it works - when I
read about it a couple of years ago, I set about testing it. I
believe that this is one reason why Gmail (for example) does not
render image tags contained in HTML email
As I'm starting to drown in spam (some days more than 50% of my email
is spam), I'm looking at ways to minimize fake email. I'm
considering making my email client stop rendering HTML, but that
means I will no longer be able to read Runrev's newsletters.
I just thought I'd pass this back in case others didn't realise what
HTML email might imply. I'm copying this to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so
that they might offer an alternative to receiving HTML email, because
if I do this I won't be able to read their newsletters in future.
Bernard
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