Why I use plain text email

I've been meaning to write this for ages and the receipt of the email below prompts me to finally get around to it.

From: YouTubeReceipt <op@insightbb.com>
Subject: Your invoice no. 47185137

Subscription Receipt: YouTube MusicKey
User ID (phil@philarcher.org),
Thanks again for subscribing to YouTube MusicKey. Your free 12-months trial has ended, and you'll be charged £18.99/month starting today.
Order details
Order number:7187370
Receipt date:5/6/2020Title                                                             PriceYouTube MusicKey - Subscription                 £15.29
Paid with: ****-****-****-****                 Total  £18.99 (Includes VAT  £3.7)
For details about your subscription, visit Manage Subscriptions on your account.
If you do not want to continue your subscription to YouTube MusicKey, please  go tohttp://AYejNUBMsZt.youcancelapys.co.uk/in your account.
 
Thank you.
YouTube Support

But that's not what they want me to see. They want me to see the HTML version of that message which looks like this:

The same text as above but formatted nicely

Anyone receiving this email should be highly suspicious, whether you read it as plain text, as I did, or formatted as HTML. Why? Because the sender isn't YouTube but something called insightbb.com, and, well, guess what, I haven't signed up to YouTube MusicKey at all (does it even exist? I don't know or care). The sting is in the link they want me to click. What the rendered HTML version shows is they want me to click the words "MusicKey Subscription Cancellation & Refund". But look at the plain text. The actual URL is a subdomain of 'youcancelapys.co.uk' and that subdomain AYejNUBMsZt will be a tracker for me personally so they'd know who had been fooled into following the link. I haven't done so and I strongly urge you not to. At a guess, they'd want you to fill in your username and password which you probably use for several sites and then take as much money from you as they could.

In case it's not 100% obvious, this is not from YouTube, it's a scam.

This particular example doesn't include any tracking images but emails, even 'legitimate marketing email' generally does. That means that when you open the email, an image is downloaded from the sender's server and they can track that you opened the mail at a particular time. Plain text thwarts that since no images are shown so they don't know whether you opened their mail or not. Likewise, the links in those marketing emails will include tracking codes so they know who clicked which link and when. They'll know how long between you opening the email and following a link. They'll know whether you clicked the link at the top of the email or the end and so on. You may be happy to share that information with marketing departments. I am not.

Finally of course, HTML email and attachments to any kind of mail are a vector for viruses, so looking at the plain text is helpful as it often helps you to distinguish between genuine and scam emails.

In summary, I use plain text email because:

It doesn't look as pretty and often puts line breaks where you don't want them, but, for me, the benefits in terms of safety and privacy *far* outweigh the drawbacks. Any email client can do this (even Outlook, check the privacy and security settings). You might want to look into it.