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Use plaintext email

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Re: Use plaintext email

#61

Post by zaarn »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #27
zaarn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? The default is HTML, the majority of mail is HTML (or atleast multipart). So why does it matter if GMail defaults to what the majority is doing? Everyone (99.9999% of people) can receive and send HTML, so just do that, it's the informal standard for mail now.

I think it does matter. For my rationale consult TLA.

It's great that you think that it matters but I don't think that what you think that it matters matters in practise, really, the world is HTML email now.

Re: Use plaintext email

#62

Post by mlang23 »

zaarn wrote: post #41
e12e wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Some clients can't display HTML emails at all > Most mail clients will usually bundle a text-version of the mail, some MTAs also do this on their own. This assumes there is a proper text part (one that actually includes the content of the mail body).

Unless you violate accessibility laws or your email client is shit, there is a text part or the HTML part is screen-reader compatible.

However, a significant portion of HTML mail I receive happily violates "accessibility laws" and omit to provide a text-only part. I know that, since I actually rely on accessibility to do my daily work.

Re: Use plaintext email

#63

Post by ddevault »

zaarn wrote: post #41
e12e wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Some clients can't display HTML emails at all > Most mail clients will usually bundle a text-version of the mail, some MTAs also do this on their own. This assumes there is a proper text part (one that actually includes the content of the mail body).

Unless you violate accessibility laws or your email client is shit, there is a text part or the HTML part is screen-reader compatible.

Hahaha, that's rich. Those laws are not enforced. I actually consulted with a blind friend when writing that up and he agrees that every HTML email is a nightmare for him. Top posting too.

Re: Use plaintext email

#64

Post by zaarn »

u801e wrote: post #60
zaarn wrote: post #11

>HTML as a vector for phishing I would disagree, You can make Text-only links look fairly harmless too. The issue is more often that people do not look at all, even in text-mail, what the link points to, not that they can't see it (plus you can hover and the browser still shows the URL once you open it) >Privacy invasion and tracking Only if you use an ancient and outdated client that doesn't block external resources…

> You can make Text-only links look fairly harmless too. Could you give an example? As far as I know, you cannot do something like making a link look like it belongs to a completely different domain.

Examples from what I've seen:

    https://account:paypal.com.login@verified-account.com/phish
This, to the untrained eye, might at first glance look like a paypal.com link. In fact, it belongs to verified-account.com and it abuses the capability of URLs to contain a username and password to make it look legit.

Re: Use plaintext email

#65

Post by zaarn »

mlang23 wrote: post #62
zaarn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you violate accessibility laws or your email client is shit, there is a text part or the HTML part is screen-reader compatible.

However, a significant portion of HTML mail I receive happily violates "accessibility laws" and omit to provide a text-only part. I know that, since I actually rely on accessibility to do my daily work.

Screen readers should be able to deal with HTML-only mails for the most part, otherwise you should send the sender of that mail a reminder about those laws.

Re: Use plaintext email

#66

Post by u801e »

alphagrep12345 wrote: post #38

If you block remote image loading (to thwart trackers) and be careful about phishing links, I don't see a need for plain text-only email.

Most people aren't going to change the default configuration of their email client or use caution when dealing with phishing emails.

But if the email is plain text, then that's not an issue.

Re: Use plaintext email

#67

Post by elcomet »

u801e wrote: post #60
zaarn wrote: post #11

>HTML as a vector for phishing I would disagree, You can make Text-only links look fairly harmless too. The issue is more often that people do not look at all, even in text-mail, what the link points to, not that they can't see it (plus you can hover and the browser still shows the URL once you open it) >Privacy invasion and tracking Only if you use an ancient and outdated client that doesn't block external resources…

> You can make Text-only links look fairly harmless too. Could you give an example? As far as I know, you cannot do something like making a link look like it belongs to a completely different domain.

I'd say domain name squatting.

For example

https://login.banksofamerica.com

Re: Use plaintext email

#68

Post by wongarsu »

upofadown wrote: post #59
wongarsu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But emails can be reference documents too! In fact I would argue most work emails that are longer than a few lines are a reference document of some sort.

Then you are better off using some format that can stand alone as a file such as PDF. If it is a reference document that is intended to be edited on an ongoing basis it is better to use something like a wiki. Having to root around in your email to find a reference document is pretty inefficient and annoying.

All of the reasons given against HTML emails hold at least equally well against PDF: it's a vector for phishing and tracking, ripe with client vulnerabilities, less accessible and not displayable on a terminal. For me as a reader having to read both an E-Mail and the attached PDF is also annoying, and many people will simply skip reading the PDF.

Re: Use plaintext email

#69

Post by gmueckl »

yyyk wrote: post #57

Plaintext email is really troublesome if one wants to mail in an right-to-left language. There's simply no compatible way to override the direction/embedding without HTML * , so content is often scrambled. Many mailers won't even align to right automatically if all input is in an right-to-left language. In practice, HTML email is the only compatible way to get a semi-decent experience for these languages. * To answer…

Where are these characters stripped out? I can see that these create security issues with urls that get rendered with changed field order to look benign.

Re: Use plaintext email

#70

Post by RHSeeger »

gsich wrote: post #16
atombender wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this true? All the people I interact with professionally are sending HTML email, probably because they all use Gmail.

Do they use formatting?

For myself and the people I work with, most definitely. Bold and italics in particular to highlight/accent certain parts of the text.
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