Tom Allison wrote:
Personally, I think HTML email should be outright discarded from the start.
If you look at this arguement presented by the OP then it reinforces the
idea that most ascii is ham and most html is spam. Therefore, reject
delivery of all html based email. Or to be more succinct -- reject any
MIME type of alternative content or html only content. That would
remove probably 90% of the spam in one shot.
Speaking from an ISP perspective:
I hate to break it to you, but most end users want some sort of
formatted mail. The days of all email being ASCII-only are over, just
as the days of all websites being text-only are over.
Now, if you can come up with another markup language for formatting email...
* That satisfies end users' wants without being vulnerable to the
filter-evasion that HTML makes possible
* And you can get all the major email clients to render it
* And you can get all the major email clients to use it for formatted
composition instead of HTML (so end users can still make their text
blue and embed the latest cute image of kittens)
* And you can get commercial email campaign software to use it instead
of HTML (so organizations can include a company logo, or pictures of
the items that they're promoting in this week's newsletter)
...*then* it'll be viable to discard HTML.
Obviously, individuals and businesses handling their own mail can apply
stricter rules. But it's not something that can be done (yet) on a
large scale without disappointing a lot of people -- and not just the
spammers.
--
Kelson Vibber
SpeedGate Communications <www.speed.net>
