After blathering on in an e-mail list as to why you shouldn’t send HTML to folks back and forth… I figured I’d post it here, too. most writing done in a while.


My sympathies to all e-mailing from company environments where every message gets converted to HTML. Indeed, there is nothing the individual can do as this is almost always corporate policy and will not be changed. The reason is usually to tack on a corporate message of some sort to every outgoing piece of mail, and the editors of these programs to add commercials or corporate disclaimers and disavowals all default to HTML. Since this is the bailiwick of corporate Legal or Human Resources, don’t expect them to look beyond the default setup.

Just to repeat the process in another order to show the sequence:

1) You write message scrupulously formatted in plain text, the format of champions.

2) But squatting on the outbound queue is a software suite for covering corporate asses. It reads everything outbound, and depending on how much
money you spend it can:

a) Virus check. Ha, as if. Even if it costs nothing because the software is on hand and part of a corp license, only the Dalai Lama would be evolved enough to *slow the queue down* just to be civil. OK, I exaggerate… slightly.

b) Check for hot words like ECHELON and quarantine anything doubtful. Remember, as most corps phrase their E-mail Usage Policy “use of the company e-mail system implies consent to the conditions outlined in this Policy”, and that means you said it’s OK for them to read your mail. They promise not to unless they *really* want to.

c) Check for words related to internal projects to prevent company secrets from going out.

3) It adds some advertising or legal boilerplate to distance the company from anything this bozo might say out to the real world.

a) The message was composed in an HTML editor and is in HTML format for that extra something that HTML always adds.

b) It tries to add the HTML coda to the plain text message, only to find that plain text doesn’t support color or graphics.

c) So the plain text message in converted to HTML so the HTML coda can be added. And the world takes another step towards the Endtimes.

HTML is code that is interpreted in order to display the message in the chosen font and color and so on. It has access to the abilities of macro-enabled e-mail clients. It used to be said that e-mail couldn’t infect your system with a virus because it didn’t run anything, it just carried it.

That is no longer true, and I can’t thank Microsoft enough for making that the standard.

These “features” can be turned off, but they default to On.

I can think of plenty of Ad Prac 101 reasons for making e-mail bigger and enabling macro “viruses” that can be written by grade schoolers.

According to Steve Gibson’s page – http://www.grc.com

“Windows XP’s new support of the full raw socket application programming Interface (API) allows for the creation of fraudulent and damaging Internet traffic. This has never been possible under Windows without first modifying the operating system with third-party device drivers – which has never been done by malicious programs.”

and

“For the first time ever, applications running under the Home Edition of Windows XP – whether deliberately executed or running as hidden “Trojan” programs – will be easily able, without modifying the operating system in any way, to generate the most damaging forms of Internet attacks.”

Denial of Service attacks on corporate routers, things like that.

Security software is going to be a hot item, expect weekly updates. Home firewalls for everyone with a cable modem. Net traffic updates on the commute to work. E-mail “going down” on a regular basis due to spam traffic and macro viruses.

Those gosh darn personal computers at home are a clear and present danger to business. They need to be regulated and licensed and restricted and above all controlled. 😉