Warning: FM print can misrepresent name of MIME part as body content

[chrisjj]

This might concern you if you are using FM message Print to capture emails as legal evidence.

On a message where the FM screen display shows a MIME part as an object e.g. a DSN part https://i.imgur.com/aB3oRmr.png or attachment, Print fails to e.g. https://i.imgur.com/Df4TCPv.png and worse, substitutes part names as if they were text within of the body, and indistinguishable from text in the body.

[hadaso]

I think if you want your printed evidence to be 100% representative of what was actually sent your only option is to print the raw message.
Disabling CSS before printing can remove CSS definitions the exclude some content from the printout.
Anyway, printout can be manipulated (also screen display can be manipulated), so it cannot be expected that they necessarily represent an original document. Any display of electronic digital content is a derivative of the original. Only the source represents the original email exactly. Nowadays all major browsers allow the user to right click any element, choose "Inspect", then edit the source of the element, or the css applied to it, and the display changes immediately. I use that a lot to remove stuff from printouts when I print email, e.g. remove most email headers from the printout when I print a voucher, because there's no need for whoever gets the voucher to know the final destination of the email.

[chrisjj]

Originally Posted by hadaso

I think if you want your printed evidence to be 100% representative of what was actually sent your only option is to print the raw message.

No I am not looking for 100% representative. I am looking for sufficient representative for submission to a court under a witness statement attesting the accuracy. And this gross inaccuracy needlessly prevents that.

And no, the raw message is not an option, because it does not convey the message as intended by the sender and seen by the receiver - not least when it is encoded.

Originally Posted by hadaso

Anyway, printout can be manipulated (also screen display can be manipulated),

Anyway raw message text can be manipulated even more easily.

Originally Posted by hadaso

Any display of electronic digital content is a derivative of the original.

I agree, but the raw text is an even more distant derivative of the original. The /original/ is what was composed and Send-clicked.

Originally Posted by hadaso

Nowadays all major browsers allow the user to right click any element, choose "Inspect", then edit the source of the element, or the css applied to it, and the display changes immediately. I use that a lot to remove stuff from printouts when I print email

I promise not to tell the judge

Thanks for your thoughts.

[JeremyNicoll]

Originally Posted by chrisjj

This might concern you if you are using FM message Print to capture emails as legal evidence.

On a message where the FM screen display shows a MIME part as an object e.g. a DSN part https://i.imgur.com/aB3oRmr.png or attachment, Print fails to e.g. https://i.imgur.com/Df4TCPv.png and worse, substitutes part names as if they were text within of the body, and indistinguishable from text in the body.

Why don't you screenshot the whole of the browser's display (or even the whole of the screen? **) That explicitly shows what the user could see, rather than depending on whatever FM's print support (or the browser's print support) does.

** provided nothing else confidential is going on on the screen(s) in your system. In some ways an image of one or more screens including a browser window might look more authentic ie less likely to have been manipulated to show faked content.


I mostly use Firefox which has its own screenshot tool (right-click on a page to get the context menu) allowing you to choose whether to capture the visible portion of a webpage, or the whole current content of the page (if that's larger than a screenful). You can also drag a box around just part of the page if you want a more limited picture.

[chrisjj]

What if the message is longer than the screen? Take a video of it scrolling?

[SideshowBob]

Originally Posted by chrisjj

Anyway raw message text can be manipulated even more easily.

The raw message is usually DKIM signed.

If I were you I'd do one of two things: either save the .eml file and then import it, or extract the mime section as a new email. You probably will need an IMAP client either way, Fastmail has dropped a lot of features in recent years.

IIRC in claws-mail you can drag an rfc822 mime section from the mime pane into a folder, but it can't import an eml file directly. I think many clients can import a eml file.

[chrisjj]

Originally Posted by SideshowBob

The raw message is usually DKIM signed.

Good point, But how can I verify that sign on an EML?

Originally Posted by SideshowBob

If I were you I'd do one of two things: either save the .eml file and then import it

... into a client that does not have this problem. Sure. Good workaround.

Originally Posted by SideshowBob

, or extract the mime section as a new email.

I'd prefer the message intact.

Originally Posted by SideshowBob

I think many clients can import a eml file.

Thunderbird. I use it not for send and receive, but as an .EML viewer.

[JeremyNicoll]

Originally Posted by chrisjj

What if the message is longer than the screen? Take a video of it scrolling?

I assumed that the Firefox screenshot option "full page" would screenshot the whole thing. That certainly works on many other websites - eg I've captured some newspaper pages that way, resulting in a single image that (when first opened in an image viewer) looks very tall and very narrow ... but one can zoom it in.

It's a pity it doesn't work for FM's pages.

[JeremyNicoll]

I took a screenshot (with Firefox) while editing my previous post. You can see it here:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ebn0d...2pgc7wxeq&dl=0

On the zoom setting I'm using on my laptop, I'd have had to scroll that down 6 or 7 times if I'd been taking separate page-by-page screenshots. I didn't have to.

I suppose the point is that Firefox already knows what the entire page area looks like, so /it/ doesn't have to scroll to capture a copy of the potential screen content. Maybe FM's webpage code is too clever.

[SideshowBob]

Originally Posted by chrisjj

Good point, But how can I verify that sign on an EML?

... into a client that does not have this problem. Sure. Good workaround.
...I'd prefer the message intact.

I was actually suggesting saving Fastmail's eml link for the original message as a new message and printing that out. I don't see what the problem is given that they will have to take your word that any of this is genuine.

I don't think Fastmail is doing anything wrong here. There's usually enough information in the preamble for an end user to determine which email has been rejected - an imbedded original is mainly there for admins to diagnose problems.

I don't know if any client will display the DSN text inline with text from the original message. Sometimes this appears to happen because the server has sent a simplified DSN without full mime encoding.

[JeremyNicoll]

Originally Posted by JeremyNicoll

I assumed that the Firefox screenshot option "full page" would screenshot the whole thing. That certainly works on many other websites - eg I've captured some newspaper pages that way, resulting in a single image that (when first opened in an image viewer) looks very tall and very narrow ... but one can zoom it in.

It's a pity it doesn't work for FM's pages.

I've opened a ticket with FM about this not working.

[chrisjj]

Originally Posted by SideshowBob

I don't think Fastmail is doing anything wrong here. There's usually enough information in the preamble for an end user to determine which email has been rejected

Then please what do you mean by preamble? The "body" here shows the bouncing adress and nothing else identificatory.

Originally Posted by SideshowBob

I don't know if any client will display the DSN text inline with text from the original message.

Nor do I. I am not saying it should.