Do mailers honor text/plain when the message is obviously HTML?

[Matthias Andree]

tim at fungible.com (Tim Freeman) writes:

> I recently received a spam with some HTML in a text/plain section of a
> multipart/alternative.  Bogofilter dutifully interpreted the HTML as
> plain text, and therefore bogofilter didn't undo the htmlus
> interruptus and it got a false negative, as the spammer intended.

Fine. So we have his HTML junk as plain text tokens, where they usually
don't show up. Train bogofilter with that mail and spammer begone.

> 1. Many mailers will interpret a text/plain section as HTML if it's
>    obviously HTML.  (This one started with a DOCTYPE tag, so it should
>    have been obvious to any program that cared.)

Mailers that ignore the MIME type are broken, their "workaround" or
"service to the user" helps the proliferation and prolongued life of
rotten software that can't get its types right, and is hard to properly
filter for, and should be phased out.

> 2. Few mailers will interpret a text/plain section as HTML, so this
>    spammer was completely clueless and sent an email that few of his
>    recipients are going to decipher or reply to.  Bogofilter should
>    not be changed to parry utterly clueless spammers, since there
>    generally won't be enough of them to matter.
>
> Any opinions on what environment Bogofilter should assume here?

#2. If someone sends HTMLish stuff as plain text through a broken mailer
    (inadvertently or deliberately), it will generate dozens and
    hundreds of indicative "spammish" tokens.

-- 
Matthias Andree

Encrypt your mail: my GnuPG key ID is 0x052E7D95