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This page is about the reasons not to use HTML emails. HTML emails are harder to read, larger, take longer to download, facilitate all kinds of viruses and security risks, are impolite, are mostly spam and deleted by many spam traps and can't be read by all email clients. Be nice: Send plain text emails.
The reasons
- Not all email programs read HTML emails
Millions of people do not have a client that can read HTML emails. Your email comes out as a very large blob of unsightly text and weird characters and is mostly unreadable. Some universities, companies, individuals and offices only have plain text email clients, for some of the reasons listed below. Also for security some email systems filter out HTML emails. Sending HTML emails is impolite and presumptuous. Many modern mobile devices such as mobile phones and PDAs cannot read HTML emails. It's just a bad idea to send them because you don't know if the receiver can read them! Email was designed for plain text, not for HTML.
- HTML emails are a security risk
It is best to turn off HTML emails on your system, so your machine will not automatically open them and will only display them in plain text. HTML emails allow companies to insert images that act as trackers for your email address (by using an ID number as part of the IMG SRC). All email viruses and security breaches use the scripts that can be run inside HTML emails. Without HTML email, there would be none of the high-profile email viruses or security holes of the past five years that have plagued users, they simply could not spread. HTML email is best left off for security.
- HTML e-mails waste bandwidth
"Most HTML messages are at least twice as big as plain text only, and they can be many times larger." (From George Dillion.com article "7 reasons why HTML e-mail is EVIL")
"HTML emails are more than twice the size of plain text emails. [...] Even with a broadband connection, such wasted bandwidth adds up over thousands of messages per week. It slows down my email client (more crap to parse through) and wastes my time." (By Marc Zeedar)
- They connect to the internet by itself (From George Dillion.com)
"If you're off-line, opening an HTML email containing images may (by default) open a connection to the internet."
- HTML emails are unfriendly and unsightly
On my machine, I have told my email client to use precisely the font and font size that I find best. So, plain text emails are very easy to read as they are displayed perfectly customized the way I want them. HTML emails, however, set their own fonts and sizes and are unsightly and more difficult to read. Also, many who send HTML emails use standard HTML behavior including paragraph tags that do not create an empty line, etc, making it even worse.
- SPAM
Companies who send large quantities of emails always send it in HTML email, because they can insert images that track the email as soon as it is opened. The images are retrieved from their server, they simply add an ID number to the URL of each image, and therefore track your email address. HTML email is equated with SPAM, making it immediately irritating, annoying and impolite. Many programs that try to reduce spam will automatically flag or delete HTML emails. If you are conversing with someone and they're using HTML emails, it is very awkward to have to go take their emails out of quarantine each time they send any.
People
People other than spammers send HTML emails for various reasons. Those who are new to the Internet, the ignorant, the impolite and the young are all frequent HTML email senders because they in general don't realize the pitfalls.
"The main people who use HTML email are the ignorant, who don't know how to turn off that option in their email client, and the marketers, who want to sell you crap."
No longer online. Marc Zeedar 2002 Apr 30
When I've requested that people do not send HTML emails to me, most the time people have not known how to just send normal emails, and some have not seen the point. Hopefully this page (and link in the quote above) rectifies both of those.
How to Avoid Sending HTML Emails
Hotmail
On the tools menu when composing an email use the "rich-text editor" box to get rid off of the text edit buttons such as bold, italics, etc. Once the formatting buttons are gone, the mail will be plain text. Also you may need to check your signature options. If you have a signature that is added to all emails, which is in HTML format, it will still convert emails to HTML. Just have a plain text signature, and your emails will stay plain text, as they're supposed to be.
"You can check whether HTML encoding is turned off in your E-mail client, and turn it off if it isn't. How do you do that in your particular e-mail client? Luckily, some helpful people have gathered this information for many different e-mail clients. Below you will find a list of links to such compilations of recipes for how to turn off the HTML code in your E-mail. Either one of the links should be enough to find the recipe for your particular e-mail client; if not, try another one.
helpdesk.rootsweb.com/listadmins/plaintext.html
http://www.expita.com/nomime.html: Turning Off HTML or MIME client list:
Agent/Free Agent, AOL 5.0 and earlier, AOL 6.0, AOL 7.0, AOL 8.0, AOL 9.0, AOL 6.0, 7.0, 8.0 Alternate, CompuServe 2, 3 and 4, CompuServe 2000, Earthlink 5.0, Entourage 2001 (MacIntosh), Entourage X (MacIntosh), Eudora Light v3.0.5 and earlier, Eudora Light v3.0.6, Eudora Pro v4.0.2 and earlier, Eudora Pro v4.2 and later, Eudora v5.0, Hotmail, IncrediMail Xe, Juno v5.0, Lotus Notes R5, Mac OS X Mail, MS Internet Explorer 4.0, 5.0, 5.50 and 6.0, MSN Explorer 6.0, MSN Explorer 7.0, MSN 8.0, MS Exchange 4.0 and other MS problems, MS Exchange Server 5.0, Mozilla 1.1, Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5, Netscape Communicator 3.xx, Netscape Communicator 4.0x - 4.4x, Netscape Communicator 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, Netscape Communicator 6.0 - 6.1, Netscape Communicator 6.2, Netscape Communicator 7.0 (PR1 & Final), Netscape Communicator 7.1, Novell Groupwise, Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002, Outlook Express 4.0, Outlook Express 5.0, 5.50 and 6.00, Outlook 97 (without Service Release 1 SR1), Outlook 97 (with Service Release 1 SR1), Outlook 98 (Work group version), Outlook 98 (Internet version), Pegasus Mail 3.x, Pegasus Mail 4.x, Pine 4.x (Unix), Pine 4.x (Windows), Poco 2.xx, TheBat! v1.18, WebTV, Yahoo Mail
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