[OT?] HTML email is evil - or, why we get so much spam

[Bernard Devlin]

 >>
Might I ask what mail client you're using? Just turning off images is  
pretty much sufficient; you don't have to disable HTML altogether.
<<

Thanks, Bill.  I realised that, and I had checked my email client.   
It doesn't allow me to turn off images, only disable HTML rendering.   
I'm using Lotus Notes.   This list has a few Notes-haters (Hi,  
Xavier, Shao Sean) - and I'm starting to become one myself :-)  My  
ISP changed their SMTP confiuration recently, and that has meant I  
had to start to use Mail.app to send email.

But Notes is cross-platform, immune to viruses,  allows me to keep  
replicated copies of the mail database, and allows me to do fast and  
sophisticated full-text searches on the > 200,000 emails in the  
database.   So, I'm very reluctant to give it up.  I could retain  
some of the benefits by just using Notes as an email server, and  
accessing it via Outlook/Mail.app, but I'd end up using 3 mail clients.

Anyway, I thought it might be useful information for the rest of the  
list to know about spammers and HTML email.  I am getting the  
impression though that most of you knew this, and (wisely) had images  
turned off by default.

Bernard