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Re: Could we start accepting rich-text postings on the gcc lists?
Hi -
On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:58:33PM -0500, Daniel Berlin wrote:
> [...]
> I'd love to see data on this. As others have pointed out, almost
> every other open source project accepts html email. [...]
> Do you have reason to believe our existing spam detection solution
> will start to fail massively when presented with html email? [...]
Yes. I run a similar spamassassin setup at home as sourceware's, and
it routinely lets through spam that is disguised in HTML. That is
after all trivial to do - font size=1 color=white or somesuch gunk.
Annoyingly, the spam's hidden bayes-countering filler goo shows up in
its full html-to-text glory in a text-based MUA.
> After all, if most of the HTML email is spam, something being HTML
> email is a great signal for it.
Dunno about "most", but "an uncomfortable amount" is right.
> [...]
> Note that *we* are currently rejecting multipart/alternative if it
> contains text/html, even if it contains text/plain.
> This is fairly obnoxious.
See above. Spam filtering on HTML bodies is not very effective,
unless one's a gmail. There is no mechanical way to ensure that the
multipart alternative text/plain is equivalent -- and if it were,
then it could just have been sent as is in the first place (were it
not for MUA intransigence).
- FChE