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Evolution lets you default to the plain text version of an email, even if it contains an HTML version [0], so if you have that setting enabled (which I do, and

Evolution lets you default to the plain text version of an email, even if it contains an HTML version [0], so if you have that setting enabled (which I do, and strongly recommend), it should hopefully reduce the impact of this issue. [0] Edit > Preferences > Mail Preferences > HTML Messages > HTML Mode = Show plain text if present

jeroenhd 1y ago
That's a load-bearing "if present" there. Companies that want to track you can just send email without plaintext versions and you're still vulnerable.
- selfhoster11 1y ago
  The good news: even if you think the AI is good-for-nothing, rewriting HTML into legible plaintext is the one thing it can do pretty well. And probably even a 3B model would do well on this task, so you don't need to send the email body off to the cloud to be data-mined.
  - Matheus28 1y ago
    Why do we need AI for that? Can’t we just strip html tags?
    - selfhoster11 1y ago
      You could do that, actually. I brought up AI because it could result in slightly cleaner output than just the naive de-tagging, and because you can use it for general purpose text tasks - not just HTML to plaintext but also semantic message labelling/search, suggestion of task items in a to-do list, maybe some other things too.
      - juliuswaldmann 1y ago
        Can't wait for half of my emails being hallucinated
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    That's such a silly overkill use of AI. I'm not having my mail server kick off a 100W GPU every time I receive an email just to extract text from a structured document, nor am I having my computer drain my battery the moment I receive an email. Outsourcing the ridiculous power consumption to the cloud as some kind of dataleak-as-a-service is even worse. I'd rather try to parse the HTML with regex.
- akimbostrawman 1y ago
  >can just send email without plaintext How? Even if they write in HTML only there is nothing which could prevents a email client from just not rendering them which would mean plaintext.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    For that to work, you need to enable the "only show plain" setting, not the "show plaintext if present". And you'll probably get a lot of empty emails you can't read that way, unless you configure the plaintext plugin to dump the HTML into the reader view.
    - akimbostrawman 1y ago
      If an E-Mail client does not have such a basic feature you should use a better one e.g. thunderbird/claw Not at all. You will see the HTML code but not render which is easily readable since HTML is very simple.

jeroenhd 1y ago

That's a load-bearing "if present" there. Companies that want to track you can just send email without plaintext versions and you're still vulnerable.

selfhoster11 1y ago
The good news: even if you think the AI is good-for-nothing, rewriting HTML into legible plaintext is the one thing it can do pretty well. And probably even a 3B model would do well on this task, so you don't need to send the email body off to the cloud to be data-mined.
- Matheus28 1y ago
  Why do we need AI for that? Can’t we just strip html tags?
  - selfhoster11 1y ago
    You could do that, actually. I brought up AI because it could result in slightly cleaner output than just the naive de-tagging, and because you can use it for general purpose text tasks - not just HTML to plaintext but also semantic message labelling/search, suggestion of task items in a to-do list, maybe some other things too.
    - juliuswaldmann 1y ago
      Can't wait for half of my emails being hallucinated
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  That's such a silly overkill use of AI. I'm not having my mail server kick off a 100W GPU every time I receive an email just to extract text from a structured document, nor am I having my computer drain my battery the moment I receive an email. Outsourcing the ridiculous power consumption to the cloud as some kind of dataleak-as-a-service is even worse. I'd rather try to parse the HTML with regex.
akimbostrawman 1y ago
>can just send email without plaintext How? Even if they write in HTML only there is nothing which could prevents a email client from just not rendering them which would mean plaintext.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  For that to work, you need to enable the "only show plain" setting, not the "show plaintext if present". And you'll probably get a lot of empty emails you can't read that way, unless you configure the plaintext plugin to dump the HTML into the reader view.
  - akimbostrawman 1y ago
    If an E-Mail client does not have such a basic feature you should use a better one e.g. thunderbird/claw Not at all. You will see the HTML code but not render which is easily readable since HTML is very simple.