Super Mail Forward
Creative
email hack
SHOW HN2016
How HN took it
11 positive, 8 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 8 critical, out of 28 comments about the project. Thread score +0.23.
Idea: 9 for, 3 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 3 againstExecution: 0 for, 2 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Fun, creative hack that exploits email client quirks
From 4 comments
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…
shimon on HNThat, sir, is totally awesome. Well played.
alch- on HNThis is a really interesting hack. I love things that exploit the oddities of the landscape to do artsy/funky things; far more interesting than finding yet another way to trick…
__jal on HNWow, this was a very creative use of forwarding.
Pranz on HN
Possible uses for pranks and team email-testing games
From 2 comments
This is great for pranks: you send a serious looking email to someone, and then they forward it to someone else thinking they sent some chart or whatever but the next receiver…
ldom22 on HNIf 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…
drvdevd on HN
Objections
Relies on fragile, inconsistent HTML handling across email clients
From 3 comments
> 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…
avian on HN"Limited" is OK. Inconsistent across mail apps is bad.
gohrt on HNMore than anything, this thing shows the sad situation of CSS support in different email clients.
yoavm on HN
Security and privacy risks such as phishing and spam
From 3 comments
Or a new way to distribute spam? ;)
myztic on HNOr spearphishing. Send a secretary something that looks like a nice business proposal, then when she forwards it to her boss it's a link to some XSS attack.
semi-extrinsic on HNShould be the other way around. You forward an email that's "obviously" spam, and then the abuse guys go "what do you mean, this is a regular project status update!"
zarq on HN
Questions
Does Gmail cache images per user or per URL?
From 1 comment
That brings up an interesting question. Does GMail cache per-user or per-url? I would suspect the latter.
breakingcups on HN
Alternatives named
Canary trap watermarking for leak tracing
From 1 comment
That's a classic canary trap. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap
alcari on HN
Tab damage counters in usenet signatures
From 1 comment
This reminds me of the old concept of "tab damage"[1] on usenet/mailing lists. People used to leave little "devices" in their signatures that based on this that would point to…
tdeck on HN