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List:       sylpheed
Subject:    [sylpheed:22120] Important : Need to disable HTML rendering, to prevent PHISHING
From:       Mark Smith <sylpheed () ecd454c569bd3359dd78788d1c15ea30 ! nosense ! org>
Date:       2003-12-24 13:39:45
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Hi,

I've been a happy sylpheed user for a while now. I've found it to be the best email client I've used.

Today, I received a "phishing" email - one where the spammers / grifters try to get you to enter senstive \
information at their bogus web site. 

What made this one different was that it looked _very_ authentic, in particular as it appeared to be an \
ASCII email. Fortunately I didn't fall for it.

What seems to be new was they had used HTML to craft an email that looked like ASCII, such that the URL \
displayed in the email looked legitimate, yet the underlying href= value was different. I don't know \
whether this is a common practice, but it is the first time I've heard of or seen it.

Although I  guessed it was fake, as I've never supplied a "nosense.org" email address to Visa, I clicked \
the "http://www.visa.com" URL. It lead me to a web site with a hosting error, so it appears that the \
"phishermen" had been found out.

I've put a copy of the raw email, so people can look at it, at the following uRL

http://www.nosense.org/Visa_Security_Update

I hadn't thought much about whether Sylpheed rendered HTML emails - I just figured it highlighed URLs by \
recognising the "http:" etc format, with utilising or following the HTML proper mark up. I knew Sylpheed \
sent emails in ASCII.

To prevent these sorts of emails looking legitimate, I wanted to switch off HTML rendering. I'm currently \
using Sylpheed 0.98a, but can't seem to find where to do it.

If somebody can suggest where I can disable it, I'd appreciate it. Alternatively, if the option to \
disable HTML rendering doesn't exist, I'd like to suggest it for a future feature.

Thanks,
Mark.


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