Slightly OT: Verify certificate?

Tim ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au
Wed Jun 4 11:52:40 UTC 2008


g:
>>> never open email you are unsure of.

Tim:
>> That's a bit like never eat any food that you've never eaten before.

g:
> not really. you can 'whiff' food.

The smell of food wouldn't prove it to be non-poisonous.  Even a taste
test can be risky.  Analogies are never a great idea.

> 'whiff' you email. maybe more to your understanding,

Don't be an asshole with me.

> if you open an email in an editor that is not 'email aware'

On some systems just attempting to do that can be a problem.  You've got
to save the content, that's a risk.  Even if it's already on disc,
you've got to browse over to it, that's also a risk, even without
opening it with something else.  That's mostly a Windows risk, but the
point I'm making is that nothing's absolutely safe, and I'd be hesitant
to give someone advice as you're doing.

> i do not read email in my 'inbox' with thunderbird.

That's a little like "I have an email program, but I don't use it,"
which is hardly a good recommendation for using a program.  And just
avoiding the unknown mail isn't really a great solution.  A great many
people get compromised by mail that came from someone they knew, or
apparently is, and they're messages that they'll have accepted.  This is
a bit of a blind faith issue, and that's never a really good approach.

>> I particularly dislike Thunderbird's method of rendering all mail as if
>> it were HTML.

> then you have not learned how to configure thunderbird. nor run a pre filter
> on your email.

There isn't a way to stop Thunderbird rendering mail, certainly no way
without performing brain surgery on the program.  The simple proof of
the pudding is how the quotes in this message will be re-rendered with
bars next to them, rather than show you the original greater-than
characters that are really there to the left of the quoted text.  That's
it turning plain text into HTML.

You may think that selecting the plain text version is showing you the
plain text, but it's not.  It's just picking which version of a
multi-part message for it to treat.

Having to not "open" messages, but check the source code instead, is a
lousy way to have to handle your mail, and the sort of thing that
someone will soon tire of.  It's far better to have a mail program that
doesn't interpret and render it's impression of the message, in the
first place.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.25.3-18.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.






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