Subject: No Mail In HTML, It Dumps You With Spam. From: HTML_sender@ Sender: HTML_sender@ I append http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_html_format.txt See Also http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_mail_formats.txt Your mail was nearly dumped unseen. I chanced to notice your name buried in HTML junk, segregated automatically for deletion en masse. You mailed in HTML, - spammers' favourite format. Your previous HTML mail may have been dumped unseen. Same for future HTML. Please change your mailer settings to send plain text (ASCII) not HTML, http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/mail/ascii.html Or get a better mailer that can, Or do not expect me to see your HTML mail. Reasons HTML mails dumped: - HTML is sent by clueless, incompetents, & spammers. - Nearly all spam is in HTML format. - HTML fonts & sizes appeal to spammers. - Spam in HTML is harder to filter, (spammers like that too). - I save Lots of time not reading HTML spam, Without spam filtering I saw toward 1000 spams a day, mostly HTML. My addresses well known on the net & long since harvested by spammers. - Clueless wasters of my time use HTML: Many club members used to mail me, appealing to consume my time unpaid, wanting free personal help for club mail list subscription changes etc, despite free robots being available for mail lists & ski bookings, & copious free help pages, & web booking form etc. They consumed time I could not afford. Now they're forced to spend their own time, educating themselves from my help pages & using the robots. - Clueless Job Agents: Those who don't specialise, & would want to beat me down necessarily on hourly rate, cos they don't appreciate what they'd be selling, & would sell too cheap, they too use HTML. Why To Learn How To Send Ascii: - To raise yourself visibly above the flood of spam excrement - To not be segregated automatically as a likely spammer. - To not advertise incompetence :-) - To not be ignored, dumped, or blocked, if you mail or post to lists looking for help from skilled internet professionals. - To not waste 2/3rd of the bandwidth on Internet on all email you send. (Imagine if all car drivers drove triple length stretch limos ;-) - To use older services, some of which eg mail subscription robots, & remote query & booking engines etc, may not allow HTML, only Ascii. - To encourage associates by example, not to all waste 2/3rd the Internet's mail bandwidth. (HTML mail usually goes out in verbose form, along with a more concise Ascii version, bundled as `multipart/alternative'). You may think "It's just my email" but the aggregate spam & HTML of all the clueless incompetents wastes most of the Internet's mail server hardware, bandwidth, electricity, pollution generating & server staff admin. Why The Computer Un- Skilled Use HTML: - Some providers & mailer software eg AOL pander to unskilled customers, seducing them with HTML format, which looks flashy. - AOL used to seem to provide a mailer that could not send Ascii. - AOL seems to defaults to display received Ascii mail in Courier font (which some may not like). The 2 are not synonymous though. ( I can display Ascii in any default font & size I choose. ) Get a better mailer, even AOL supports at least 3 it seems: http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/mail/ascii.html - AOL are not the only ISP to lead the clueless astray with HTML. - Senders don't realise when they make some random choice of font, (eg "Arial") that looks pretty on their screen, that the recipient may not be running the same sort of software or operating systems, & may have only an ugly (if any) version of Senders font. The recipient may be repelled by Ugly hard to read text. A recipient may well Not be motivated to ensure a good rendition of a sender's chosen random personal irrelevant font choice. - The ignorant are unaware: Asserting a font is a criteria for spam detection. Do I Fear Losing Customer Enquiries ? Not really: - Nearly all direct customers I've ever dealt with, are skilled enough to appreciate the services I sell, & know it's foolish to mail truly skilled computer people in HTML, 'cos many of us automatically dump floods of excremental HTML. - It's DP/IT technical project managers who contact me for consultancy work. They know. Maybe personnel/ Human Resources don't know, but they don't initiate contact with freelancers. - Unix specialised agents who'd command a better price than general job agencies, should also know not to send HTML junk. - Barely computer literate end users & home PC/ MS-Windows users have no budget to purchase my consultancy. I'm not paid to support unskilled Microsoft users, (except to configure corporate interfaces to MS systems, & gateway protect MS using servers in corporate environments.) - My email contact page http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/mail/ has: "Mail Me in plain text ASCII" & "please also give me a quick Phone Call" & some business contact pages have response phrases embedded to avoid deletion by spam filter. Sorry If You May Think This Elitist - If you do, read http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_free_time.txt Free Software http://www.berklix.com/free/ To escape the mess of viruses, Microsoft, & Word doc junk. Commercial Consultancy for firewalls, mail filters, web & file servers etc, Unix & Microsoft etc compatible. http://www.berklix.com http://www.berklix.com Computer Consultancy http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/cv/ My Resume - English & German http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/contact/ Contact - German for business also OK. http://www.berklix.com/free/ Free Software http://www.berklix.org Free Organisations & Clubs