XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-10, alt.comp.microsoft.windows   
   From: G6JPG@255soft.uk   
      
   On 2025/12/16 8:42:47, Steve Hayes wrote:   
   > On Mon, 15 Dec 2025 10:07:30 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver"   
   >  wrote:   
      
   [R.Wieser original bit]   
      
   >> It's not just some "kid"; I've had companies that do same in emails.   
   >> Some even just say something like "we have tried to contact you in   
   >> words-and-pictures ..." in the plain-text part. The worst are ones where   
   >> their _system_ is sending two-part emails, but the person _sending_ them   
   >> has no idea that that's what's happening, and is unable to comprehend   
   >> when you try to explain. That's just about tolerable when it actually   
   >> works, but one large company (I think it was FindMyPast, a genealogy   
   [snip]   
      
   >   
   > Most HTML-only emails are spam, or designed to look like spam. I   
      
   The odd spam - or, more accurately, phishing attempt - I've received   
   recently have been quite well-designed; the most recent being made to   
   look as if it was from DVLA (driver and vehicle licencing agency). [I   
   forwarded it to the usual phishing address.]   
      
   > sometimes get emails from banks and the like formatted to look as much   
   > like spam as possible, so I'm perpetually having to fish them out of   
   > spam queues -- they use lazy HTML, and other spammers tricks like   
   > one-pixel codes to let them know if you've read them.   
      
   Yes, my client - Thunderbird - doesn't fetch online contend unless I   
   authorise it, which I can do per sender, per source (so it can catch   
   stuff not from the sender), or per individual email. I rarely enable any   
   of those. (My previous client, Turnpike, didn't I think display - or   
   fetch - online content at all.)   
      
   >   
   > My mail reader is setot read plain-text by default, and only to   
   > display HTML if there isn't a plain-text version. But it will not   
      
   Turnpike certainly was set that way; I think Thunderbird too.   
      
   > display "lazy HTML" -- ie parts of the message that are not part of   
   > the message, but have to be fetched from a remote web site. It just   
   > displays those as greyed-out blanks.   
      
   Indeed. (The worst are where what would be fetched are not text, but   
   images of text.)   
   >   
   > This might annoy the whizz-kid web designers, but email is not a web   
   > page, and so far it has kept me safe from a lot of the malware that   
   > uses all those tricks.   
   >   
   Exactly. I think, these days, that (not showing it) is the default for   
   most email clients, but I guess enough people use ones where that is not   
   the case - or, turn it on - for it to be worth the spammers'/phishers'   
   while.   
   >   
   Are such things - display online content - turned on by default in most   
   webmail interfaces, such as gmail? I guess most people are using those   
   these days.   
   >   
   >   
      
   --   
   J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf   
      
   Viagra won't make you James Bond , but it will make you Roger Moore ..   
   (@robskiing on YouTube, 2023)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)