Re: Workstation question...

[Julien Stern <stern@lri.fr>]

On Wed, Nov 22, 2000 at 10:47:54AM -0700, Hubert Chan wrote:
> >>>>> "Martin" == Martin Pauley <debian@kasei.com> writes:
> 
>     Martin> On Wed Nov 15 11:27:13 2000, Hubert Chan wrote:
>     >> You should post there anyways.  Posting off-topic makes people annoyed.
>     >> If you don't want to wade through the whole list to look for replies,
>     >> either use a good mail reader that can handle threading (recommended
>     >> method), include a note ...  And please don't post in HTML.  It makes
>     >> people annoyed.
> 
>     Martin> You could use a good mail reader that can handle HTML (I recomment
>     Martin> mutt). :-)
> 
> I use gnus, which handles HTML fine.  But that's not the point.  Not everyone
> uses a mail reader that can handle HTML.  If you post in HTML, you
> automatically limit who can respond to your message, which is a bad idea if
> you're looking for help.  Plus, HTML just adds a bunch of useless junk to your
> mail.  You shouldn't use HTML unless you really need it for some reason.
> 
I totally agree. Furthermore, (this is debian-security after all :)),
it can be "dangerous" in some sense to read HTML email. It might allow
the sender to find out that you have read the email (put an image or an
iframe or css or something like that -- this is apparently used by spammers
a lot). Even worse, if a security flaw is found in JS or Java (this
might possibly happen), and you read your mail with something JS or
Java enabled, you could run malicious code... 

Julien