Re: rendering HTML: how to disable

[Bernardo <bernardo.bacic@pobox.com>]

An old problem revisited

>>> LinkedIn etc) in their (HTML formatted) email
>>> include URLs which i suspect are used to track users
>>> when opening them
>>
>> Try this:
>>
>>     (setq mm-discouraged-alternatives '("text/html" "text/richtext"))
>
> ah, much better, thanks
>
>>
>> Otherwise doesn't it work just by not following the
>> URLs?
>
> AFAICT the page pointed by URL is loaded as soon as soon as the message
> is opened, to the rejoicing of spammers


i still have an HTML formatted email which when opened makes connections
on the web; the email headers, among other things show this:

Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

as it happens, i'm permanently running a home brewed (quick 'n' dirty)
script which monitors TCP connections, this is what it shows when
the offending email is viewed:

18:32:52  SYN                 68.232.35.48:80   4434478
18:32:53  ESTABL              68.232.35.48:80
18:32:53  ESTABL            59.100.127.135:80
18:32:53  ------              68.232.35.48:80
18:32:55  SYN                 68.232.35.48:80   4434483
18:32:55  ESTABL              68.232.35.48:80
18:32:56  ------              68.232.35.48:80
18:33:01  ESTABL            59.100.127.135:80


the Gnus variable mm-discouraged-alternatives value is:

mm-discouraged-alternatives is a variable defined in `mm-decode.el'.
Its value is ("text/html" "text/richtext" "image/.*")
Original value was nil

If i open another email message and go back to the offending one, the
TCP connections are established again.

But that's not all, i've this time, for a good measure, fired up
Wireshark and on opening the message it showed a two dozen DNS queries
(which go over UDP) for the domains that had "marketing" and "images" in
their name.

Guess just setting 'mm-discouraged-alternatives' is required but not
sufficient for preventing such behaviour. Any other ways from within
Gnus this could be prevented?

"GNU Emacs 25.0.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.4.2) of
2015-03-08 on deb"

"Gnus v5.13"

-- 
Rgds, Bernardo