5 ms·

TL;DR: A series of markup and styling hacks that exploit HTML interpretation quirks of various web email services can be hacked to intentionally vary message ap

by shimon 11y ago

TL;DR: A series of markup and styling hacks that exploit HTML interpretation quirks of various web email services can be hacked to intentionally vary message appearance between services. Coupled with forwarding, which further transforms the email using service-specific quirks, you can make a game where different paths of forwarding across services trigger different appearances. Fun hack! I feel like there should be some clever practical applications but I'm drawing a blank.

avian 11y ago
> I feel like there should be some clever practical applications but I'm drawing a blank. I wouldn't want to maintain any clever practical applications that break any time one of these web services subtly change the way they mangle HTML.
rogeryu 11y ago
Fun is a good enough "application" for me! ;-)
lassejansen 11y ago
One great application of this would be to hide the unsubscribe link if the email is forwarded.
- anonbanker 11y ago
  no anti-pattern is ever "great".
  - AdamTReineke 11y ago
    I wouldn't call that an anti-pattern, it prevents people you forwarded the mail to from easily unsubscribing you from the mailing list. They aren't subscribed, they shouldn't be able to unsubscribe.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Would only work if the recipient you forward to has a different email provider.
hk__2 11y ago
> I feel like there should be some clever practical applications but I'm drawing a blank. You could maybe make some sort of email analytics where you could guess the email client of the readers. Use a different background 1x1 gif image for each one then check your logs.
drvdevd 11y ago
If you're in the email marketing business having to create and test email templates, this could actually be a very practical exercise and a team building game at the same time, I think. These bugs are a serious pain point sometimes for folks on deadlines. I could see making a sort of perpetual internal game out of this to make the job more fun and incentivize documenting new bugs found.
andrei_says_ 11y ago
It would be extremely useful for email invitations which change the action when forwarded. If it worked on all email clients.
nrao123 11y ago
I remember reading Silicon Valley company being frustrated with whatever emails they had sent on company policy being forwarded to journalists (Kara Swisher??) . One hack they came up with was to slightly reword every email slightly to identify who did it. Maybe - this solution would help in figuring out who the leakers are!
- alcari 11y ago
  That's a classic canary trap. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap

by shimon 11y ago

avian 11y ago

> I feel like there should be some clever practical applications but I'm drawing a blank. I wouldn't want to maintain any clever practical applications that break any time one of these web services subtly change the way they mangle HTML.

rogeryu 11y ago

Fun is a good enough "application" for me! ;-)

lassejansen 11y ago

One great application of this would be to hide the unsubscribe link if the email is forwarded.

anonbanker 11y ago
no anti-pattern is ever "great".
- AdamTReineke 11y ago
  I wouldn't call that an anti-pattern, it prevents people you forwarded the mail to from easily unsubscribing you from the mailing list. They aren't subscribed, they shouldn't be able to unsubscribe.
cookiecaper 11y ago
Would only work if the recipient you forward to has a different email provider.

hk__2 11y ago

> I feel like there should be some clever practical applications but I'm drawing a blank. You could maybe make some sort of email analytics where you could guess the email client of the readers. Use a different background 1x1 gif image for each one then check your logs.

drvdevd 11y ago

If you're in the email marketing business having to create and test email templates, this could actually be a very practical exercise and a team building game at the same time, I think. These bugs are a serious pain point sometimes for folks on deadlines. I could see making a sort of perpetual internal game out of this to make the job more fun and incentivize documenting new bugs found.

andrei_says_ 11y ago

It would be extremely useful for email invitations which change the action when forwarded. If it worked on all email clients.

nrao123 11y ago

I remember reading Silicon Valley company being frustrated with whatever emails they had sent on company policy being forwarded to journalists (Kara Swisher??) . One hack they came up with was to slightly reword every email slightly to identify who did it. Maybe - this solution would help in figuring out who the leakers are!

alcari 11y ago
That's a classic canary trap. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap