Hi Thomas,

Yes feel free to contribute anything you come up with. I'll add them to the community download page.

Best,

Joe

I don't know all the reasons why, but I suspect that several factors are

1. The history of email is that there were proprietary (not open) implementations that were/are the dominant players, so most vendors were concerned about just making sure things worked in their specific product rather than agreeing on how it should be done.

2. Html email probably came as an after thought on  aystem designed really for text

3. Security risks from spammers are even higher for email than web pages because malicious web pages require you to visit their site in order to be infected while email allows bringing potentially malicious content right to you. So all vendors have big challenges to solve and there may not be much motivation to collaborate if you think you can differentiate yourself from competitors by solving these issues better than them.

There is a movement afoot called the Email Standards Project, but I'm not sure how much real traction its getting.

In any case it is currently very challenging to produce nice looking html emails that render correctly in every or most email client software.

Best,

Joe

The worst thing that can happen with plain text is you are exposed to content you would rather not read.

With html and particulary in combination with javascript or use of media players etc, the worst that can happen when you visit a malicious web page is your computer can be infected with a virus allowing a remote user to use your computer any way they wish usually without you even being aware of it.

This is why email clients typically strip out anything like javascript or rich media like Flash. Even image files have in the past been used as an exploit against system bugs in browsers and operating systems. Not long a go there were ways of taking over an unpatched machine using a malformed .png or .jpeg file.

This is why some email clients filter out images unless you explicitly choose to view them.

Of course emails that include attachments are also potentially dangerous no matter whether plain text or html.

So html offers a richer platform for malicious intent than does plain text.

So spam falls into 2 categories, content we don't want to see, such as ads for products we aren't interested in from sellers we don't know and malicious content meant to actually take over your machine or steal identity information that can later be used to access bank acounts etc.

Phishing attacks are usually email that looks like its from someone you know such as your bank or paypal, they ask you to click a link and update your account. The link may take you to a page hosting malware or it may take you to a page that looks like your real bank or PayPal and prompts you to login so they can get your password.

So its important never to click links in emails like this. Even if you think its real.

New ways of attacking are discovered/invented all the time.

Its really a sad state of affairs, the vast bulk of all email traffic is spam of some kind or another.

Best,

Joe