Why do eMails contain "=20" and "=C3=A4" char codes ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sven Claasen
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Sven Claasen

Occasionally (but not always) I am getting eMails which contain a lot of characters codes
beginning with an "=" in the text body e.g. "=20" and "=C3=A4".

What is the reason ?

Is this an error of the sending or an error of the receiving eMail client ?

Is this an error in the Win System or a matter of the eMail client?

Sometimes CSS statements (beginning with <STYLE>) are visible as well. Is the reason for that
the same as for the char miscoding ?

Sven
 
In the past, if anyone sent a message to a Microsoft Outlook user that has
the encoding option set to "User Defined" will cause the message to be shown
in its raw format (you will see the headers and raw body parts in the body
section).
 
it means the messages are composed using Unicode encoding and the mail
server or your client can't handle it.
 
Those character codes are probably the hexadecimal equivalent numbers for
special characters. For example, =20 is probably a space and =C3 is "<". If
you converted all of them you would have the actual message. Why you are
getting this is probably something to do with the sender. What they are
doing to cause this is hard to track. Do you always get these from the same
person?

Frank
 
it's an encoding issue and is caused by either one of the mail clients or
servers. the css in the body is usually caused by a malformed message and
the server displays it as text.
 
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