Folks,
I guess it did not occur to me until now since I am starting to use Evolution's Email system... is that when I receive unsolicited email that are html formed, I noticed that *all* of the images are shown with the "X" images instead of the picture they are supposed to be.
Is that normal?
One thing I like about M$ desktops over linux (fedora) is that "all of this mundane stuff" is mostly already installed so you wouldn't notice... images and most things are there and is taken for granted. That is the way things should be IMHO.
Due to the various reasons of legality (blah, blah, blah) - it seems that linux makes it as easy as doing a root canal when you have to figure out just exactly what needs to be done to install the various "necessary packages" in order to complete the "missing picture" be it the web-browser, (html aware) the email applications and so on. This is a major gripe at least for me.
Can anyone tell me what needs to be done for evolution?
I know that there are other sites to try to make things easy such as http://www.stanton-finley.net but come on... shouldn't these things eclipse M$ or at least get on-par with M$ who goes out of their way to make things easier for their customers for the express purpose of customer retention?
Kind regards, Dan
Dan Thurman wrote:
Folks,
I guess it did not occur to me until now since I am starting to use Evolution's Email system... is that when I receive unsolicited email that are html formed, I noticed that *all* of the images are shown with the "X" images instead of the picture they are supposed to be.
Is that normal?
Yes. This is a feature, not a bug. Remote images in emails are often web bugs and so are turned off by default. To view images in a specific email, select "Load Images" from the "View" menu (or press Ctrl-i). To load images by default, set the approriate option under "HTML Mail" in Mail Preferences.
Paul.
Just type Ctrl-I. In order to display the images automatically the sender needs to be in your address book I believe.
On 3/27/06, Dan Thurman dant@cdkkt.com wrote:
Folks,
I guess it did not occur to me until now since I am starting to use Evolution's Email system... is that when I receive unsolicited email that are html formed, I noticed that *all* of the images are shown with the "X" images instead of the picture they are supposed to be.
Is that normal?
One thing I like about M$ desktops over linux (fedora) is that "all of this mundane stuff" is mostly already installed so you wouldn't notice... images and most things are there and is taken for granted. That is the way things should be IMHO.
Due to the various reasons of legality (blah, blah, blah) - it seems that linux makes it as easy as doing a root canal when you have to figure out just exactly what needs to be done to install the various "necessary packages" in order to complete the "missing picture" be it the web-browser, (html aware) the email applications and so on. This is a major gripe at least for me.
Can anyone tell me what needs to be done for evolution?
I know that there are other sites to try to make things easy such as http://www.stanton-finley.net but come on... shouldn't these things eclipse M$ or at least get on-par with M$ who goes out of their way to make things easier for their customers for the express purpose of customer retention?
Kind regards, Dan
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
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Dan Thurman wrote:
I guess it did not occur to me until now since I am starting to use Evolution's Email system... is that when I receive unsolicited email that are html formed, I noticed that *all* of the images are shown with the "X" images instead of the picture they are supposed to be.
Is that normal?
It is, unless you prefer to let any spammer or phisher know that your address is valid and you're reading their messages. :)
One thing I like about M$ desktops over linux (fedora) is that "all of this mundane stuff" is mostly already installed so you wouldn't notice... images and most things are there and is taken for granted. That is the way things should be IMHO.
I don't know the defaults for an MS mailers, but if they show remote images by default, they are junk. That's simply a bad thing to do. Look up web bugs and you'll know why.
Can anyone tell me what needs to be done for evolution?
I don't have evo 2.6 (nor do I even use it), but the online manual for 2.4.0 says this:
Some images are links in a message, rather than being part of the message. Evolution can download those images from the Internet, but does not do so unless you request it specifically. This is because remotely hosted images can be slow to load and display, and can even be used by spammers to track who reads the e-mail. Not loading images automatically helps protect your privacy.
To load the images for one message: 1 Click View > Message Display > Load Images.
To set the default action for loading images: 1 Click Edit > Preferences, then click Mail Preference. 2 Click the HTML Mail tab. 3 Select one of the items: Never Load Images Off the Net, Load Images in Mail From Contacts, or Always Load Images Off the Net. 4 Click Close.
There is more after that if you use a proxy. So check out the evo documentation on your system to be sure all of this is relevant to your version.
I know that there are other sites to try to make things easy such as http://www.stanton-finley.net but come on... shouldn't these things eclipse M$ or at least get on-par with M$ who goes out of their way to make things easier for their customers for the express purpose of customer retention?
It all depends on what you want as a customer. I'm thankful that the default setting in Evolution doesn't download remote images in HTML. I value my privacy. If that's not a concern for you, then I understand why you won't be as happy with the defaults.
- -- Todd OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xD654075A | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp ====================================================================== Suppose I were a member of Congress, and suppose I were an idiot. But, I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 12:47 -0500, Todd Zullinger wrote:
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Dan Thurman wrote:
I guess it did not occur to me until now since I am starting to use Evolution's Email system... is that when I receive unsolicited email that are html formed, I noticed that *all* of the images are shown with the "X" images instead of the picture they are supposed to be.
[snip]
Thanks to all who responded. I guess I am better informed as to why the default is to disable the images by feature. It is a security feature to protect us from those who can cull your email address.
Sigh... too bad. I just did not imagine IMAGES can be used to circumvent security.
Again, thanks! Dan
On Monday 27 March 2006 15:55, Dan Thurman wrote:
Thanks to all who responded. I guess I am better informed as to why the default is to disable the images by feature. It is a security feature to protect us from those who can cull your email address.
Sigh... too bad. I just did not imagine IMAGES can be used to circumvent security.
Dan, I don't use Evolution, but KMail has a feature that I find very useful - perhaps Evo can do something similar?
My default is to display only plain text, no html, and to display attachments iconised. However, I can give further settings to a folder. I have one folder to which I direct trusted companies, where html mail is allowed to be displayed. What happens is that I see empty boxes where most of the images should be, and a warning patch at the top, like this:
Note: This HTML message may contain external references to images etc. For security/privacy reasons external references are not loaded. If you trust the sender of this message then you can load the external references for this message by clicking here.
A single click then allows all the images to be displayed.
Note, though, that you should use such a facility with care. You have to be careful who you decide to trust and set up filters to that folder ONLY for people you can absolutely trust.
HTH
Anne
On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 09:55 -0500, Dan Thurman wrote:
Thanks to all who responded. I guess I am better informed as to why the default is to disable the images by feature. It is a security feature to protect us from those who can cull your email address.
Sigh... too bad. I just did not imagine IMAGES can be used to circumvent security.
Not just privacy, as specifically outlined in the prior messages, but also security: If you opened the image files on a windows client, not only do you risk being spied upon, you risk software exploits that really do expose security flaws.
The classic case being HTML mail that has a MIDI file to play in the background, but an executable is sent instead. MIDI files are considered safe, so they're "allowed". Beyond that check, Windows ignores the MIME type description saying it's a MIDI, examines the content to find out what it thinks it is, discovers that it's an executable, then does what it normally does with the type of file that it determines to be - in this case it runs it. The file can be malware but not any virus or trojan that such protective software detects, and can do whatever it damn well pleases on the box.
Be grateful that Linux is not Windows, and doesn't try to be. If it did, what would be the point? You might as well use Windows.
Tim wrote:
On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 09:55 -0500, Dan Thurman wrote:
Thanks to all who responded. I guess I am better informed as to why the default is to disable the images by feature. It is a security feature to protect us from those who can cull your email address.
Sigh... too bad. I just did not imagine IMAGES can be used to circumvent security.
...
The classic case being HTML mail that has a MIDI file to play in the background, but an executable is sent instead.
And don't forget the (generally buffer-overflow) attacks based on images off type tiff, pcx, bmp, png, psd, pnm, xwd, jpg, pcx, gif, xpm, photocd, wmf, pdf, niff, and exif data in types that support exif. These have all come to light in the last 24 months.
http://secunia.com/search/?search=image
I remember reading that some of these attacks on windows/internet explorer are very effective.
DaveT.
Dan Thurman said:
I guess it did not occur to me until now since I am starting to use Evolution's Email system... is that when I receive unsolicited email that are html formed, I noticed that *all* of the images are shown with the "X" images instead of the picture they are supposed to be.
Is that normal?
Yup. It's a security feature. Many such images can actually be server-side scripts that log a confirmation of your email address then output proper image data. This means that a potential spammer or virus writer will know that your email address is, in fact, valid and monitored. If I'm not mistaken, Evolution will display the images by default if the sender is in your address book though. Otherwise you can select it in the View menu.
I know that there are other sites to try to make things easy such as http://www.stanton-finley.net but come on... shouldn't these things eclipse M$ or at least get on-par with M$ who goes out of their way to make things easier for their customers for the express purpose of customer retention?
Sure it'd be easy for the user, but it'd also be a whole lot less secure...
Hope that helps.
On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 09:26 -0800, Dan Thurman wrote:
Folks,
I guess it did not occur to me until now since I am starting to use Evolution's Email system... is that when I receive unsolicited email that are html formed, I noticed that *all* of the images are shown with the "X" images instead of the picture they are supposed to be.
Is that normal?
---- Evolution => Edit Menu => Preferences => Mail Preferences => HTML Mail tab => Loading Images ----
One thing I like about M$ desktops over linux (fedora) is that "all of this mundane stuff" is mostly already installed so you wouldn't notice... images and most things are there and is taken for granted. That is the way things should be IMHO.
---- everyone has an opinion
unlike Microsoft, there actually is a method to report your expectations and how/where your expectations are falling short, that's called 'Bugzilla'
I think with specificity to your concern, that is a security issue since it is easy enough to include an invisible (or visible image) within the html mail that loads an external link which signals to the 'sender' that you have opened the email.
Thus unlike Microsoft, the default settings on Linux systems tend to favor security rather than ease of use. ----
Due to the various reasons of legality (blah, blah, blah) - it seems that linux makes it as easy as doing a root canal when you have to figure out just exactly what needs to be done to install the various "necessary packages" in order to complete the "missing picture" be it the web-browser, (html aware) the email applications and so on. This is a major gripe at least for me.
---- I think that the applications Thunderbird and Firefox are pretty much the same regardless of platform. Evolution, being part of gnome tends to have gnome philosophy in terms of configuration choices (few) etc.
As for the non-GPL License stuff such as mp3 support, flash support, acrobat reader, java etc. - that's unfortunate but either you hold to the convictions of GPL or you don't. Those packages are not now, and are unlikely to be GPL licensed and thus suitable for inclusion into the distribution of the software itself and will likely always require 3rd party repositories to get installed (if not a little more effort).
Gripe all you want on the incompatible license issue...it won't go away. ----
Can anyone tell me what needs to be done for evolution?
I know that there are other sites to try to make things easy such as http://www.stanton-finley.net but come on... shouldn't these things eclipse M$ or at least get on-par with M$ who goes out of their way to make things easier for their customers for the express purpose of customer retention?
---- personally, I think the comparison to Windows is an insult to Linux in general but recognize that there are many people whose reality of a computer OS is Windows.
Recognize that Fedora isn't about customers or customer retention. It is about community involvement. If you want to participate by using, by reporting bugs, perhaps contributing to the documentation, packaging software, doing coding, the door is open and you can choose where you fit in...no price of admission beyond that of an open mind to absorb the difference in philosophy from square one.
This is not Windows, not going to be Windows, and only those who wish to see it as a replacement to Windows can judge the effectiveness of that endeavor - that isn't the point of Linux at all. It is NOT intended to be a replacement to Windows...it is an operating system with benefits and shortcomings, just like all others...the big benefit is that you own it, never need to purchase restricted use licenses, etc.
Craig
On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 10:53 -0700, Craig White wrote:
On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 09:26 -0800, Dan Thurman wrote:
Folks, [snipped]
All in all, you made some good points to consider. As for filing a bugzilla report, it is not necessary because I understand the philosophical differences as you mentioned and I am better informed. Feedback was what I was looking for and I believe I have all the answers I need.
I agree that security is very important and I agree (now) that images should be off by default, and turned on when the source is trusted.
Thanks for your feedback, Dan
Craig
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Anne Wilson -
Craig White -
Dan Thurman -
David Timms -
Paul Howarth -
Peter Gordon -
Tayfun Can -
Tim -
Todd Zullinger