sandhils said:
Some incoming messages start with 'This is a MIME encoded multipart
message',
and then have lots of formatting marks such as:
<head>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=3D"Content-Type" CONTENT=3D"text/html; =
charset=3Dus-ascii">
<meta name=3DGenerator content=3D"Microsoft Word 10 (filtered)">
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Tahoma;
Please tell me how to get rid of this unwanted rubbish!
Thanks
MIME is used to encode the part of the body that is formatted using
HTML. Apparently your sender doesn't understand that a plain-text MIME
part should be included whenever an HTML MIME part is included. Then
the recipient can read it in HTML or plain-text modes. It sounds like
you have your e-mail client configured to read in plain-text mode but
the sender only provides an HTML MIME part.
Hotmail is an example of this type of non-compliance. If you use
Outlook [Express] to send e-mails, whether through Hotmail or some other
service, Outlook [Express] does the composing and includes both the
plain-text and HTML MIME parts. However, if you use Hotmail's webmail
interface to compose your outbound message, it includes only the HTML
MIME part and this can screw over the recipient that cannot read
HTML-formatted e-mails or has configured their client to always read in
plain-text mode, plus the lack of a plain-text MIME part can trigger
some spam filters to tag it as suspiciously spammy. I do not bother
using Word as the e-mail editor for Outlook so it is possible that Word
will screw up the content of the message by not including a plain-text
MIME part. So you could also ask your sender to NOT use Word when
composing e-mails to see if that fixes the problem.
Tell your sender to make sure whatever they use includes both a
plain-text and an HTML MIME part. You can't do anything about it as
regards to what they send so they have to fix it on their end. Or
configure your e-mail client so it can render HTML-formatted e-mails.
If you are using Outlook [Express], make sure the security zone is set
to Restricted Sites and that it is set to its High level. That will
eliminate the nasties that can be used within HTML-formatted e-mails
when displayed within Outlook [Express]. However, any link you click on
will open an instance of Internet Explorer and that will default to the
Internet security zone which usually has looser settings. No security
zone will eliminate web bugs (linked images). In OE6, you can enable
the option to disable linked images. In Outlook 2003, I believe there
is a similar option. I use SpamPal with its HTML-Modify plug-in to
eliminate linked images along with other functions regarding
HTML-formatted e-mails.
