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Re: [CM] Mozilla reports Thunderbird usage growing

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In article <md81ba$sop$1@news.albasani.net> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> writes:
>Per Hedeland wrote:
>
>> VanguardLH wrote:
>>>
>>> http://emailclientmarketshare.com/ Tbird doesn't even make it to the
>>> top 10 in this list.
>> 
>> Not claiming the numbers are wrong, but I couldn't help noticing:
>> "Calculated from 1.1 billion opens tracked by <link deleted> ..."
>> I.e. it seems it only counts clients that auto-confirm your e-mail
>> address for spammers - which, regardless of its other faults,
>> Thunderbird does not.
>
>Ah, you might be correct but for a different reason.

No, the reason you describe at some length is exactly the one I'm
referring to.

> So there would be a bias in their statistics to
>e-mail clients that were either misconfigured, deliberately configured
>to allow externally linked content, or wimpy e-mail clients that have no
>such protection.  

Yes.

>Yet I see Outlook is listed but by install-time default it has
>externally linked content blocked.  I doubt the majority of Outlook
>users are deliberately overriding the default of blocking externally
>linked content by configuring Outlook to show it.

I've been fortunate enough to never use Outlook, but my limited
experience with Windows software is that it has a tendency to keep
popping up dialogues where you have to click "Yes"/"OK"/"Go ahead" if
you are to get anything useful done. I can well imagine that users
eventually get into the habit of doing this without actually paying
attention to what the popup is saying, so they may have inadvertently
enabled "always fetch remote content without asking" (assuming Outlook
has such a setting). Or even done it intentionally just to get rid of
the popups.

>I'm not sure what you mean by "auto-confirm".  That would require users
>to click on a link in an e-mail to confirm that the e-mail got opened
>(so the user could click on the link).

I obviously mean just the opposite, that the e-mail client fetches
remote content without any action from the user beyond "opening" the
message - since the latter is what the "opens" above refers to IIRC.
I.e. if they are really supposed to count *message opens*, they *have*
to be counting only clients that automatically fetch remote contents.

> The string sent by the client
>for the HELLO and EHLO commands does not identify the e-mail client,
>plus it is the same commands use between SMTP servers (MTAs) to transfer
>messages and those aren't e-mail clients per se.  The client adds an IP
>address, hostname, or domain for the sender, not an e-mail program name.
>Do *any* of the SMTP commands identify the e-mail program used as the
>client?

I don't know why you think SMTP is in any way involved when *reading*
(or "opening") an e-mail message, but anyway what *I* wrote above was
"auto-confirm your e-mail address for spammers", nothing about IP
addresses or client program names. The e-mail address confirmation in
the spam case is achieved by having "personalized" messages, where the
link includes the address of the recipient in one way or another. I
don't know how they figure out the e-mail client name, and don't
particularly care.

--Per Hedeland
per@hedeland.org

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[CM] Mozilla reports Thunderbird usage growing RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-02-28 21:04 +0000
  Re: [CM] Mozilla reports Thunderbird usage growing VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2015-02-28 23:31 -0600
    Re: [CM] Mozilla reports Thunderbird usage growing Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> - 2015-03-02 12:43 +0000
    Re: [CM] Mozilla reports Thunderbird usage growing per@hedeland.org (Per Hedeland) - 2015-03-04 08:15 +0000
      Re: [CM] Mozilla reports Thunderbird usage growing VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2015-03-04 16:35 -0600
        Re: [CM] Mozilla reports Thunderbird usage growing per@hedeland.org (Per Hedeland) - 2015-03-06 07:30 +0000

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