HTML in email = more Spam - True/False? 1

[humour]

** I looked for a SPAM forum and there isn't one that exists here. Sorry if this is posted in the wrong forum.

I have heard that simply display html in email can lead to more spam and that many companies as a policy is turning off HTML in their email programs? Is this true? If so how does it work - how can simply having HTML in email lead to more spam.

Secondly, if it is true - can someone point me to simple instructions on how to turn off HTML in Outlook and Outlook Express.

~ Howie

 

[Salem]

Sure it can.

An image URL causes communication with a server to fetch that image so it can be displayed locally.

Add to that URL any kind of ident tag and they can easily verify that the mail has been read, and that your email address is therefore live.

For example, this is the kind of junk I found inside one of my recent emails containing HTML (some digits changed for my privacy)

<IMG SRC="[URL unfurl="true"]http://somesite.net/on.jsp?t=12345678.111.2222&o=http://somewhere.else.com/images/p1x1.gif"[/URL] WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1 alt=" ">
<!--  DO NOT delete previous line if you want to get statistics on the number of opened emails -->

Who's going to notice a 1x1 pixel image?

It's simply there to track you, nothing more, nothing less.

The thing even tells you that's what it's doing just to make it easy for the spammers to configure.

--

 

[humour]

Thanks for the reply Salem...

Now for the more important question...

Will turning off HTML in my users email reduce the addition of new spam???

In Outlook Express I found a setting : Tools>Options>Read tab [X] Read All Messages in Plain Text.

How do I set that up in Outlook?

Thx in Advance