• Re: What's best way to handle HTML emails in Mutt

    From David Wright@21:1/5 to Jonathan Dowland on Mon Feb 17 16:50:02 2025
    On Mon 17 Feb 2025 at 09:02:11 (+0000), Jonathan Dowland wrote:
    On Sat Dec 28, 2024 at 4:41 AM GMT, hobie of RMN wrote:
    What's the best way to handle this? Switch to Thunderbird or
    claws-mail?

    I switched away from (neo)mutt as my primary mailer a little while
    ago, but before I did, I was using netsurf-gtk as a viewer for HTML
    mails in mutt. It was not configured as my default browser elsewhere,
    so viewing HTML mails from mutt (and spawning netsurf-gtk) did not
    interfere with any existing browser sessions I had.

    I might set this up for my current mailer (aerc) at some point. I also
    want to look into wrapping it in "unshare" or similar, in order to
    disable network access (so HTML emails cannot "phone home")

    I do that with lynx -localhost. One consequence is regular
    communications (sometimes by email!) from some banks etc,
    complaining that you don't open their emails. Some are so
    stupid as to offer no way of denying that fact electronically.
    You may also get unsubscribed from email circulars that you
    subscribed to.

    Cheers,
    David.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Greg Wooledge@21:1/5 to David Wright on Mon Feb 17 17:00:01 2025
    On Mon, Feb 17, 2025 at 09:40:31 -0600, David Wright wrote:
    I do that with lynx -localhost. One consequence is regular
    communications (sometimes by email!) from some banks etc,
    complaining that you don't open their emails. Some are so
    stupid as to offer no way of denying that fact electronically.
    You may also get unsubscribed from email circulars that you
    subscribed to.

    Yes. I ran into this issue myself, with a mailing list that I had
    subscribed to. That list is run by Mailchimp, and they send multipart HTML/text messages, with tracking image URLs in the HTML part. If
    you only read the text part, they never receive their tracking info,
    and after some unspecified time period, they conclude that you aren't
    reading their messages. Then they silently unsubscribe you *AND*
    blacklist your email address so that you can't re-subscribe after you
    figure out what the problem is.

    So, now that I've re-subscribed under a new email address, I make an
    effort to copy the HTML part back to my desktop PC and open it in a
    web browser, to make sure they know I'm reading it. Pain in the ass,
    is what it is.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Richard Owlett@21:1/5 to Greg Wooledge on Mon Feb 17 17:30:01 2025
    On 2/17/25 9:58 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
    On Mon, Feb 17, 2025 at 09:40:31 -0600, David Wright wrote:
    I do that with lynx -localhost. One consequence is regular
    communications (sometimes by email!) from some banks etc,
    complaining that you don't open their emails. Some are so
    stupid as to offer no way of denying that fact electronically.
    You may also get unsubscribed from email circulars that you
    subscribed to.

    Yes. I ran into this issue myself, with a mailing list that I had
    subscribed to. That list is run by Mailchimp, and they send multipart HTML/text messages, with tracking image URLs in the HTML part. If
    you only read the text part, they never receive their tracking info,
    and after some unspecified time period, they conclude that you aren't
    reading their messages. Then they silently unsubscribe you *AND*
    blacklist your email address so that you can't re-subscribe after you
    figure out what the problem is.

    So, now that I've re-subscribed under a new email address, I make an
    effort to copy the HTML part back to my desktop PC and open it in a
    web browser, to make sure they know I'm reading it. Pain in the ass,
    is what it is.



    Did you tell the "offending" originator of the problem?
    Since the originator is in business to make money tell them they are
    wasting bandwidth {i.e. *DOLLARS* spent} and annoying potential
    customers {i.e. unrealized *DOLLARS* due to lost sales}.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Greg Wooledge@21:1/5 to Richard Owlett on Mon Feb 17 18:10:01 2025
    On Mon, Feb 17, 2025 at 10:22:30 -0600, Richard Owlett wrote:
    On 2/17/25 9:58 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
    On Mon, Feb 17, 2025 at 09:40:31 -0600, David Wright wrote:
    I do that with lynx -localhost. One consequence is regular communications (sometimes by email!) from some banks etc,
    complaining that you don't open their emails. Some are so
    stupid as to offer no way of denying that fact electronically.
    You may also get unsubscribed from email circulars that you
    subscribed to.

    Yes. I ran into this issue myself, with a mailing list that I had subscribed to. That list is run by Mailchimp, and they send multipart HTML/text messages, with tracking image URLs in the HTML part. If
    you only read the text part, they never receive their tracking info,
    and after some unspecified time period, they conclude that you aren't reading their messages. Then they silently unsubscribe you *AND*
    blacklist your email address so that you can't re-subscribe after you figure out what the problem is.

    So, now that I've re-subscribed under a new email address, I make an
    effort to copy the HTML part back to my desktop PC and open it in a
    web browser, to make sure they know I'm reading it. Pain in the ass,
    is what it is.

    Did you tell the "offending" originator of the problem?
    Since the originator is in business to make money tell them they are wasting bandwidth {i.e. *DOLLARS* spent} and annoying potential customers {i.e. unrealized *DOLLARS* due to lost sales}.

    The people running the mailing list are aware. They've tried to
    re-subscribe me, to no avail. They're not super tech savvy, and they're
    doing their best. I'm probably the only terminal MUA user on their
    mailing list, so now that I know what the problem is, my workaround is
    the best we're going to get.

    If you meant "Have you contacted Mailchimp", then no, I haven't.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)