I received an email today that looks like it's from SETI@home, but there's no text - only an attachment that says it's an HTML page. The subject is "SETI@home needs your help."

Now, I'm smarter than to open an attachment that comes with an email that has no text in the body, so I have no idea what might be in the attachment. But I wanted to find out if SETI@home really did send this out.

If they didn't send it, then they should probably know about it to warn their users. And if they did send it, then somebody deserves to get yelled at for encouraging people to click on an email that should ring alarm bells and go straight to the delete bucket.

Since I couldn't find a way to contact SETI directly, I thought I'd post about it here to see if anyone knew anything about it. Thanks.

Starhugger

SETI@Home sends out a yearly email asking for donations. Most email programs can display the HTML as it was intended in the body, not as an attachment.

Thanks (whatever your name is <g>). Maybe that's what it was and the email was wonky so that it didn't display it. It was sent to donors@ssl.berkley.edu.

It is legitimate, I got one too.

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Pluto will always be a planet to me.

Seti Ambassador
Not to late to order an Anni Shirt

Thanks for the confirmation, Uli. Whoever is in charge of how these appeals are sent out really needs to rethink their format. It's very bad form to have nothing in the body and only an attachment. Even if it's a technical bug that it's now simply showing as an HTML email, they need to double check their coding. Hopefully someone "official" checks these forums occasionally for reports of problems like this.

As I stated above, that's a setting in your email program. It's not something in their control unless they send out the email as plain text instead of HTML, but then it wouldn't look very professional or official.

It showed up in my email box as it was meant to, not as an attachment. I allow HTML email to display though.

Actually, this is the only email I've received like that. I get HTML emails all the time, but they don't come through as attachments. So I still think it's something that went wonky in the coding.

Then why didn't it send it as an attachment to my email? As someone who has written software before, I don't believe in "wonky" where it works as intended with one system but not another. That's not the way coding works. Bugs are often repeatable and due to coding mistakes. Most other things are due to the individual PC's settings.

Mine didn’t come as an attachment, but it began with several lines of ‘source code’ (CSS?) that shouldn’t have been visible. My WAG at the cause is some kind of syntax error in the code (or perhaps a nonstandard or newish feature), which each client deals with as best it can.

FWIW in e-mail I dislike HTML, which IME usually looks tacky rather than professional. If and when I want to see the ‘prettified’ version I follow the link to the Web page.

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