Rob's Blog

I have this discussion often with the various groups of people that I work with, and usually they don't believe me, and I come off as an old tech fogey, resistant to "modern technology". That's OK, because I know that one day they'll have a bad experience and realize that I'm right :). And I've given up trying to change how people use email anyway; that horse has left the barn, and it's too late to close the doors. So now I'm just going to refer people to this briefing and let it go at that; they'll be duly warned, and will at least be able to anticipate the problems they may encounter. Here's an Executive Summary if you're not interested in the details:

• You can't assume that viewing incoming html email won't infect your computer with a virus;


• You can't assume that a sender of an html email isn't tracking whether you are looking at the email - or even previewing it;


• You can't assume that your formatted message will look good to your recipients;


• You can't assume that your recipients will even be able to read your formatted message;


• You can't assume that the automatically created plain text version of your message will look good, or even work at all.

If you are interested in the details, read on...