{"id":675,"date":"2010-11-04T20:17:09","date_gmt":"2010-11-04T20:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/?p=675"},"modified":"2010-11-04T20:17:09","modified_gmt":"2010-11-04T20:17:09","slug":"reading-your-email-the-plain-ol-safer-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/2010\/11\/04\/reading-your-email-the-plain-ol-safer-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Your Email the Plain Ol’ (Safer!) Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of us receive our email in what\u2019s known as HTML format.\u00a0 In other words, when you receive an email, it can display multiple fonts, colors, pictures, etc.\u00a0 It\u2019s nice to look at.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the technology that allows your email to be formatted in an aesthetically pleasing way also provides holes for malicious attackers to abuse.<\/p>\n

So, to make your email safer to read, it needs to be uglier!\u00a0 This is simply accomplished by reading your email in plain text format<\/span>.\u00a0 Below is an example of an email (supposedly from Facebook) in HTML format followed by the same exact email in plain text.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Fake Facebook Email as HTML<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Same Fake Facebook Email as Text<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The issue with HTML formatted email is that it allows attackers to hide things, like malicious URL links, in the email body so they can readily infect your computer.\u00a0 In the examples above, the HTML formatted email has links (Dawn Jackson<\/span>) that lead you to believe they go to facebook.com.\u00a0 However, when you look at the same email in plain text, you can see that the actually link is anhdonline.net<\/span>.\u00a0 You\u2019ll note that to add credibility, some of the email links do actually lead to Facebook.<\/p>\n

Setting the format for viewing email is pretty simple but depends on what you use to read it.\u00a0 If you use Swatmail (or the Zimbra client), click on the Preferences tab and then select the Mail icon in the left hand column.\u00a0 At the option for how to \u2018Display Mail\u2019, select \u2018As Text\u2019 (see below).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Displaying email as Text in Swatmail<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Thunderbird users, click View on the top menu bar and select \u2018Message Body As\u2019 and then \u2018Plain Text\u2019.<\/p>\n

For AppleMail users, the steps are similar.\u00a0 Click View on the top menu bar then select Message and then \u2018Plain Text Alternative\u2019.<\/p>\n

Uncover what\u2019s hiding in your aesthetically pleasing email and be safer!!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of us receive our email in what\u2019s known as HTML format.\u00a0 In other words, when you receive an email, it can display multiple fonts, colors, pictures, etc.\u00a0 It\u2019s nice to look at.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the technology that allows your email to be formatted in an aesthetically pleasing way also provides holes for malicious attackers to abuse. So, to make your email safer to read, it needs to be uglier!\u00a0 This is simply accomplished by reading your email in plain text format.\u00a0 Below is an example of an email (supposedly from Facebook) in HTML format followed by the same exact email … Continue reading Reading Your Email the Plain Ol’ (Safer!) Way<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,96,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-email","category-security","category-tips","has-post-thumbnail","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ph2nPL-aT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":697,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions\/697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}