[Kde-pim] [KDE Usability] Terminology Change: "HTML" -> "Rich Text"

[Marc Deop]

On Wednesday 10 July 2013 19:17:19 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 July 2013 16:38:53 Marc Deop wrote:
> 
> > Why don't we do it the other way around? I mean, enable "Rich Text" by
> > default and give the power users the option to write in Plain Text.
> 
> > To be honest, nowadays 99% of users expect the email client to be able to
> > handle <b> or <a> tags without actually having to write them (I think it's
> > called WYSIWYG "what you see is what you get" or something like that).
> 
> The reason that "power users" prefer plain text over HTML is not because they 
> hate good looking mails, it is because they are aware of the negative 
> implications of HTML mails on security and privacy.
> I am a researcher in the field of "usable security", specializing on 
> potentially dangerous emails (e.g. phishing or other scams), so I know that 
> actually, HTML mails are more dangerous to "regular users" (we mostly call 
> them "novices") than "power users" (which we mostly call "experts"). Experts 
> know that they should look to the status bar to see what a link in an HTML 
> mail really points to before clicking it, novices don't. They think "If it 
> looks like PayPal, it must be PayPal", since they are not aware that a fancy 
> layout can be copied and pasted with a few keystrokes. And I didn't even 
> mention privacy issues with remote content (which novices do not know anything 
> about either).
> Though all this has more to do with receiving than with sending HTML mails, it 
> still shows that the shift towards HTML mails in general is detrimental to 
> security and privacy. So, just because others don't care about those topics 
> and think it's a good idea to push for HTML mails, does that mean we have to 
> do the same?

I realize now that my email looked like I was supporting html emails. My apologies, that was not my intention. ( I despise html ways almost the same I despise top posting...)

Regards,

Marc Deop

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