The Only Safe Email is Text-Only Email (theconversation.com)

Sergey Bratus, Research Associate Professor of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, and Anna Shubina, Post-doctoral Associate in Computer Science, Dartmouth College write: The real issue is that today's web-based email systems are electronic minefields filled with demands and enticements to click and engage in an increasingly responsive and interactive online experience. It's not just Gmail, Yahoo mail and similar services: Desktop-computer-based email programs like Outlook display messages in the same unsafe way. Simply put, safe email is plain-text email -- showing only the plain words of the message exactly as they arrived, without embedded links or images. Webmail is convenient for advertisers (and lets you write good-looking emails with images and nice fonts), but carries with it unnecessary -- and serious -- danger, because a webpage (or an email) can easily show one thing but do another. Returning email to its origins in plain text may seem radical, but it provides radically better security. Even the federal government's top cybersecurity experts have come to the startling, but important, conclusion that any person, organization or government serious about web security should return to plain-text email (PDF).

Comments

Text Only

[Bigbutt]

Been reconfiguring my email and web clients to send text only and not to display or download images. Fun at corporate when I don't see folks idiot corporate icons and backgrounds. Heck, I seldom click on attachments from others in the company (certainly not from external sources) for a couple of hours at minimum. I already know my boss doesn't love me :)

A couple of years back, corporate came out with a standard signature block with html, images, and links. I kicked back with a request for a text only signature block due to various issues with how we manage servers plus provided a link to the Usenet RFC for signatures. They responded with an updated standard that included a text based block with dashdashspace (-- ) :)

[John]

That is why I use mutt

[gweihir]

Sure, I had to make one concession to the ASCII-challenged, I now filter HTML through lynx as more and more people do not even understand a request for "non-HTML" email these days, but that is it. With very rare exceptions this is entirely enough for email.

Global warming

[eminencja]

Rendering plain text email is so much simpler and uses so much less CPU time/power that it could easily have a measurable effect on the global warming.