SpiderBin said:
I orginally wrote about this on my blog
(
http://spiderbin.com/archive/2005/01/08/204.aspx) and today I found
out
about this site from Mark Bowers blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/bowerm/archive/2005/01/04/346183.aspx?Pending=true.
Here's my post:
Suggestion for Microsoft to improve Outlook productivity
I've got an idea; I'd call it Regions...
Wouldn't it be nice when typing an email if you could identify
specific
regions of that email which are for the eyes of
thisperson[at]my[dot]com &
thatperson[at]my[dot]com
and not theotherperson[at]my[dot]com, even though all 3 persons need
to be
on the thread?
Sorta like this:
TO: thisperson[at]my[dot]com, thatperson[at]my[dot]com,
theotherperson[at]my[dot]com
SUBJECT: Region Sample
BODY:
<region users=" thisperson[at]my[dot]com, thatperson[at]my[dot]com">
The contents of this region would not be seen by
theotherperson[at]my[dot]com
</region>
But this global bit of information would be seen by everyone.
<region users=" theotherperson[at]my[dot]com">Don't worry
theotherperson we
still like you</region>
So how does that stop all or any recipients from simply looking at the
HTML source code to see the part that you attempting to hide only in the
rendered version? You do know that lots of e-mail clients that are
configured to read in text-only mode may show a text version of your
HTML-formatted e-mail?
An HTML-formatted message *SHOULD* (but is not required to) contain both
a
plain-text MIME part and an HTML MIME part. For users of e-mail clients
that don't understand HTML or have been configured to read in plain-text
mode, they still have a plain-text MIME part that is readable and
displayed. Sending
HTML-formatted e-mails without a plain-text MIME part can raise the
threshold that the message gets tagged as spam and never delivered to
the recipient. A "good" HTML-formatted e-mail should look like in the
body of the message:
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
------=_NextPart_000_0001_01C4F70D.B47E5430
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<plain-text version of the message>
------=_NextPart_000_0001_01C4F70D.B47E5430
Content-Type: text/html;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
<HTML version of the message>
So if you send an HTML-formatted e-mail without the plain-text MIME
part, expect to raise the chances your message gets detected as spam.
By not including a plain-text MIME part, some e-mail clients will then
use a converter to show the HTML part as plain text (sans tags) so they
may not see the portion you have enclosed within the <region></region>
tag pair, or they might see it if the converter doesn't handle that tag
pair or if the e-mail client doesn't provide a converter and just shows
all the HTML (which is, after all, just plain text even for the tags and
everything else in the message).
So they might not see your <region> part in an HTML-formatted message
but they can look at the source to see it. They might not see the
region part if their e-mail's HTML-to-text converter omits that part but
it is unlikely for quite awhile (until the HTML spec gets updated to
define such a tag). They might see the region part if there was no
plain-text MIME part (but then ALL recipients reading in plain-text mode
would not see the region part).
It won't work. Users still get to see ALL of the message when viewing
it in raw mode. Users have become quite used to looking at the source
code for the HTML due to phishing attempts using <A> tags that show one
URL as the text rendered in the HTML document but the real URL is
something else. If they export the HTML-formatted e-mail, its content
will just be all the text contained within the HTML-formatted e-mail,
and HTML is just plain-text, too, so they can see it that way.
Send different messages if you want the recipients to see different
messages. Or use a bulk e-mail program that will insert some content
based on one list of recipients and different content based on a
different list of recipients. I think even Word's Mail Merge could do
that. Once you send your message, you are no longer in control over
what the recipient sees in it or how they can use it. Users are getting
smarter because spammers and phishers are forcing them to get smarter.
Trying to hide content within the HTML coding of an e-mail won't hide it
from them looking at it.
--
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