The 7 sins
1. HTML e-mail is dangerous
Nearly all viruses are transmitted by email. Both plain text and HTML
mail may carry malware attachments but with HTML there is a
significantly greater risk since some malware can exploit
vulnerabilities in the HTML parser to automatically execute code as soon
as the message is viewed in the preview pane (i.e. without the
attachment having to be 'opened'.)
Micro$oft Oulook is especially vulnerable to this type of attack
2. HTML e-mail wastes bandwidth
Look at the source code of any HTML message and after the headers you'll
see the message body is duplicated, once in plain text and once in HTML.
So most HTML messages are at least twice as big as plain text only, and
they can be many time larger.
3. HTML e-mail doesn't always work
Some popular e-mail readers (e.g. Pegasus) simply don't read HTML mail,
others (Pocomail and even AOL) have difficulties displaying it properly.
4. HTML e-mail can connect to the internet by itself
If you're (your computer) off-line, opening an HTML email containing
images may (by default) open a connection to the internet.
5. HTML e-mail renders slowly
Some mail apps (e.g. Outlook) can slow down considerably when rendering
HTML. The need for an HTML parser has also led to code-bloat in email
apps generally.
6. HTML e-mail is not always reader-friendly
HTML allows the sender to use unreadably small or non-standard fonts,
clashing colours, badly formatted images and sometimes there is no quick
or easy way for the reader to adjust the appearance to THEIR choice.
7. Digested lists hate HTML mail
Subscriber lists, particularly those with a digest, discourage and
sometimes block HTML (since it appears in the digest as a mess of code).
Most mailing list software packages have a feature that will strip out
HTML but given the nature of the problem there are almost always
some bits that remain. Writing accurate code to completely strip out
HTML is simply a *huge* undertaking. The removal of the HTML
and inline attchments (I suspect this is the real reason this is done
:^) ) prevents the propagation of virii, particularly those that are
targeting users of Oulook.
Bill
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