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by throw0101a 2520 days ago
> Why is plain text preferred and by whom?

Besides making phishing easier (by disguising links, unless you hover over them), what exactly does HTML add?

Most people simply bang out a bunch of text without any formatting: what does wrapping HTML around that add? I have yet to see a layman someone add useful typographic flourishes to any business communications. Any "advanced" formatting has always come from marketers.
1 comments
esoterica 2520 days ago
People use bold and italics, section headers, inline images, tables, text highlighting. The list goes on. Is it really that hard to wrap your head around the fact that formatting is useful for communication?
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throw0101a 2520 days ago
> People use [...]

Not in my experience. They hit reply, type something at the top with whatever the defaults are, and hit send.

> Is it really that hard to wrap your head around the fact that formatting is useful for communication?

I have all of Edward Tufte's books, as well Bringhurst's Typographic Style, and Chicago: I am aware of the usefulness of typography. I simply have not seen it in my day-to-day e-mails at work or in personal life (except for marketing spams).

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esoterica 2520 days ago
I see useful text formatting every day in the emails I send and receive. A reasonable person would accept that other people’s use cases and preferences are valid instead of writing haughty diatribes about what the platonic ideal of email should look like.
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throw0101a 2520 days ago
I accept that other people's use cases and preferences differ.

But given the carnage that HTML e-mail being the normal has caused in phishing and other privacy invading manners, I question whether the benefits of those use cases and preferences out-weight the detriments of the practice. Just ask John Podesta:

> SecureWorks concluded Fancy Bear had sent Podesta an email on March 19, 2016, that had the appearance of a Google security alert, but actually contained a misleading link—a strategy known as spear-phishing. (This tactic has also been used by hackers to break into the accounts of other notable persons, such as Colin Powell). The link[10]—which used the URL shortening service Bitly—brought Podesta to a fake log-in page where he entered his Gmail credentials.[1][9][11][12] The email was initially sent to the IT department as it was suspected of being a fake but was described as "legitimate" in an e-mail sent by a department employee, who later said he meant to write "illegitimate".[13][14][15]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podesta_emails

Or countless others who have been phished.

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throw0101a 2520 days ago
Replying to myself with an example of brain damage HTML e-mail, the contents of a message body:

> <html><head>

> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

> <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; URL=https://c.na39.content.force.com/servlet/servlet.EmailAttach... [...] ">

> </head><body>

> <div>Attachment not opening? Click this link: <a href="https://c.na39.content.force.com/servlet/servlet.EmailAttach... [...] ">ColorAnalysisWithOMA300.pdf</a>

> </div></html>

From a post made today:

* https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/ch83sz/

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