In A Danger of HTML Email, I wrote that not only is the use of HTML in electronic mail contrary to convention and against the principle of "What You See Is What Your Correspondent Sent", but for some it is dangerous.
There are three ways to reduce the danger.
One way is to encourage people to be more alert. Unfortunately, even alert people suffer bad days. And people may stop being alert. My late mother had been an alert, worldly-wise, and smart woman. Then she fell ill. (The only good part of this history is that she died peacefully at home.)
A second way is legal. Ban HTML mail and as a penalty set a penalty as a payment by the sender to the person who receives the mail of $100.00 damages for each message. In the United States, this will motivate people to hire lawyers to do the work and share the proceeds.
(This method could also be applied to unsolicited commercial advertising, to `spam'. Indeed, the majority of HTML email that I receive is `spam'. A smaller portion is attempted fraud. A little comes from messages written to me by people who do not know what they are doing.)
Leaving aside details, such as whether unsolicited mail from a non-commercial person or organization should be considered `spam', the problems with a legal solution are two fold:
(Spam is even more beneficial to some than HTML email. For example, banks that do not themselves engage in any unpleasant advertising benefit from messages that suggest lower mortgages. This is why the US federal anti-spam law that went into effect at the beginning of 2004 did not stop spam in the US.)
Even if the range of legitimate law enforcement is extended, there will be areas in which laws are different or not enforced.
Of course, such regions could be cut off from the World-Wide Web, converting it to the Not-so-World-Wide Web. Indeed, I have read reports that some Internet backbones are blocking packets from the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia because so much spam originates from there. Sadly, these blocks hurt people in Macedonia who are trying to do right.
The third way to reduce the danger of HTML email is technical.
Unfortunately, for success, a very high portion of people would have to adopt this procedure — more than 999 people out of every thousand. The reason is straightforward: it costs little to send very large numbers of unsolicited messages. The senders make a profit even when fewer than one in a thousand respond. The supporters of senders make a profit, too, which is why they discourage even slightly effective laws.
As a practical matter, even under the best of circumstances, too few will decide to view email without HTML. On its own, the method will fail.
The problem here is that a fraud will look nearly honest. If it is obviously a fraud, neither a program nor a person will be fooled. But which program or person doubts an honest request?
There is no doubt in my mind that this would reduce the number of incompetent criminal actions and leave the arena open only to competent criminals, such as the Russian Mafia who have hired former Soviet military programmers. I do not think this action will reduce the danger over all.
There are other technical proposals like this one; I hope that together, they will help. At the same time, I hope that dangerous actions, like those that ask for confirmation, will be dropped. (Not only do requests for confirmation sharply raise the costs of mailing lists, but crooks simply employ inexpensive people in places like India to respond. While places like India need employment, none benefit from greater criminal employment.)
In addition, rather than come out against a dangerous practice, Microsoft has promoted HTML email. Evidentially, this was to increase its sales. The company figured rightly that its customers wanted to use computers as tools, not learn about computing, and that they would rightly consider HTML email more beautiful than typewriter-like email. Moreover, the company understood that its customers would presume that it was moderately responsible. Customers would not expect the company to configure email in a manner that occasionally hurts them. So the mail format became an attraction.
Again, not everyone is going to avoid dangerous programs or companies, especially when the danger only effects a few and the programs are beautiful, convenient, and learned early.
For a solution, we need a combination of alertness, law, and technical action. Some will be alert, but not everyone. Healthy people sometimes have bad days; ill people seldom have good days. Likewise, laws can be made more effective, although for that as Przeworski said, we need
... a clear party system with stable parties, a vigorous opposition ....
Otherwise, the political system will fail. And we need to avoid reading HTML mail as HTML, we need good filters, we need other technical solutions, and we need to avoid companies and programs with a poor history.
Otherwise, we will lose the benefits of a useful and civilized form of rapid and inexpensive communications.
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