On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 12:41:46PM -0600, Vernon Schryver wrote:
I'm sure there are legitimate uses of HTML mail, but I cannot remember
ever receiving one.
I maintain a number of mailing lists which the members of various
(non-technical) organizations use to communicate with each other. The
volume of legitimate HTML email on these lists is quite high.
Programmers and sysadmins, and people who started using email before MIME
was introduced, tend to dislike HTML email. Other people see the ability to
use boldface and italics as normal features of any text-editing environment
(which they consider their MUA to be). They would find the idea of
suppressing those features simply bizarre. When writing a document that is
going to be printed, whether we use Microsoft Word or LaTeX, we can put the
title of a book in italics; people have come to expect that the same is true
when they write email.
As for attachments, nowadays, many people have digital cameras and
high-speed Internet connections, and like to send photos to their friends
via email. It is no use telling these people that 'sending large attachments
is poor netiquette'; they and their friends have the requisite bandwidth,
and it doesn't bother them.
My own view is that these issues are red herrings. Spam is spam whether it
consists of an ASCII text file or a JPEG. Effective anti-spam measures
should stop spam regardless of its format.
Ben
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