HTML email: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:23, 14 September 2020

Revision as of 07:36, 17 February 2021

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HTML allows a link to be displayed as arbitrary text, so that rather than displaying the full URL, a link may show only part of it or simply a user-friendly target name. This can be used in [[phishing]] attacks, in which users are fooled into believing that a link points to the website of an authoritative source (such as a bank), visiting it, and unintentionally revealing personal details (like bank account numbers) to a scammer.

If an email contains [[web bug]]s (inline content from an external server, such as a [[Digital image|picture]]), the server can alert a third party that the email has been opened. This is a potential [[email privacy|privacy]] risk, revealing that an email address is real (so that it can be targeted in the future) and revealing when the message was read. For this reason, all modern popular email clients (as of year-2019) do not load external images until requested to by the user.

HTML content requires email programs to use engines to parse, render and display the document. This can lead to more security vulnerabilities, denial of service or low performance on older computers.