I've come to know that HTML formatted email is a high-risk thing, eschewed by most responsible users. But, I do value HTML formatted email for the text formatting, particularly for company press releases and so forth.

I would like to read HTML formatted email in my email client, but would like to do so in a "secure" manner -- where I would define secure as: no requests from this client app for http service should be honored. That would permit the text formatting to be rendered in the client, but would not load image files or other things embedded in the mail message. (Right?) What I don't know is: would this cutoff requests run by javascripts that might be embedded in the message (which would be okay...)? And what other types of things typically travel in HTML formatted email?

Galeon has a nice set of filters for HTML pages, but none of my mail clients have anything like what Galeon offers. However, I imagine I could setup iptables or hosts.deny to trap for mail client activity. What should I look for in how-tos and tutorials that would walk me through processing and allowing/denying requests coming from the mail client?

Thanks!

PS: I would also like to change the default browser that gets launched from Kmail when I click on a link. Currently, Konqueror is launched, and I would like to change that to Galeon. Any help would be appreciated -- Thanks again!

Just some ideas. Run a Junkbuster proxy which can block domains, dirs and/or file extentions, unfortunately it can't block javascript, so maybe run a sed script on your mailbox to change javascript to smptin else, or just disable javascript? Anyway, I can't think of anything right now that would harm Linux now, unless its something like window.open and try to access like /proc/kcore or something in /dev wich could have the same effect as C:\con\con under wintendo...