Subject: No HTML Mail, It Dumps You With Spam.
From: HTML_sender@
Sender: HTML_sender@

		I append  http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_html_format.asc
		See Also  http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_mail_formats.asc

Your mail was nearly dumped unseen.  I chanced to notice your name
buried in HTML junk, segregated automatically for deletion en masse.
You mailed in HTML, - the spammers' favourite format.  Your previous
HTML mail may have been dumped unseen.  Same for your future HTML.
Please change your mailer settings to send ASCII not HTML, Or get
a better mailer that can,  Or do not email me & expect it received.
	http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/mail/ascii.html

Reasons I dump HTML mail:
  - Nearly all spam is in HTML format. 
  - HTML fonts & sizes appeal to spammers.
  - Spam in HTML is harder to phrase filter, (spammers like that too).
  - Clueless wasters of my time: Many club members used to mail me,
    appealing to consume my time unpaid, wanting free personal help
    for club mail list subscription changes etc, despite free robots
    being available for mail lists & ski bookings, & copious free
    help pages, & web booking form etc.  They consumed time I could
    not afford.  Now they're forced to spend their own time, educating
    themselves from my help pages & using the robots.
  - Clueless Job Agents: Those who don't specialise, & would want 
    to beat me down necessarily on hourly rate, cos they don't appreciate
    what they'd be selling, & would sell too cheap.
  - I save Lots of time not reading HTML spam, Without spam filtering
    I once saw toward 1000 spams a day, mostly HTML. My name is well known
    on the net & long since harvested by spammers.  

Why To Learn How To Send Ascii:
 - To raise yourself visibly above the flood of spam excrement
 - To not be segregated automatically as a likely spammer.
 - To not advertise incompetence :-)
 - To not be ignored, dumped, or blocked, if you mail or post to lists
   looking for help from skilled internet professionals.
 - To not waste 2/3rd of the bandwidth on all email you send.
 - To encourage associates by example, not to waste 2/3rd the
   Internet's mail bandwidth.  (HTML mail usually goes out in verbose
   form, along with a more concise Ascii version). "You may think
   `it's just my email" but the aggregate spam & HTML of all the
   clueless incompetents wastes most of the Internet's mail server
   hardware, bandwidth, electricity, staff admin & thus access costs.
 - To use older services, some of which eg mail subscription robots,
   & remote query & booking engines etc, may not allow HTML, only Ascii.

Why The Computer Un- Skilled Use HTML:
  - A minority of providers eg AOL pander to unskilled customers,
    seducing them with HTML format, which looks flashy.
  - AOL used to seem to provide a mailer that could not send Ascii.
  - AOL seems to defaults to display received Ascii mail in Courier font 
    (which some may not like).  The 2 are not synonymous though.
    ( I can display Ascii in any default font & size I choose. ) 
    Get a better mailer, even AOL supports at least 3 it seems:
	http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/mail/ascii.html
  - AOL are not the only ISP to lead the clueless astray with HTML.
  - Senders don't realise when they make some random choice of font,
    (eg "Arial") that looks pretty on their screen, that the recipient
    may not be running the same sort of software or operating
    systems, & may have only an ugly (if any) version of Senders
    font.  The recipient may be repelled by Ugly hard to read text.
    A recipient may well Not be motivated to ensure a good rendition
    of a sender's chosen random personal irrelevant font choice.
 -  The ignorant are unaware: Asserting a font is a criteria for
    spam detection.

Do I Fear Losing Customer Enquiries ? Not Really.
   - Nearly all direct customers I've ever dealt with, are skilled enough to
     appreciate the services I sell, & know full well it's foolish to mail
     truly skilled computer people in HTML, 'cos many of us 
     dump the flood of mainly excremental HTML.
   - It's DP/IT technical project managers who contact me for consultancy 
     work.  They know. Maybe personnel/ Human Resources don't know, but they
     don't initiate contact with freelancers anyway, just permis.
   - Unix specialised agents too, who'd command a better price, than general 
     computer job agencies, also know not to send HTML junk unasked.
   - Barely computer literate end users & home PC/ MS-Windows users have
     no budget to purchase my consultancy.  I'm not paid to support unskilled
     Microsoft users, (except to configure corporate interfaces to MS systems, 
     & gateway protect MS using corporate environments.)
   - My email contact page http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/mail/ has:
     "please also give me a quick Phone Call" & some business contact pages
     have response phrases embedded to avoid deletion by spam filter.

Sorry If You May Think This Elitist
   - If you do, read http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_time.asc

Free Software http://www.berklix.com/free/
   To escape the mess of viruses, Microsoft, & Word doc junk.

Commercial Consultancy for firewalls, mail filters, web &
file servers etc, Unix & Microsoft etc compatible.  http://www.berklix.com

The ASCII Ribbon Campaign: http://www.asciiribbon.org/