quote:
Originally posted by Vlavv
quote:
Originally posted by Spunky
If you take a look at a few threads around here, you'll notice it's because of people not using Smartscreen that Microsoft have had to disable urls in messages. You may be taking a second or two off loading times for websites, but open yourself up to viruses and phishing attacks. I highly recommend people don't do this
While I understand there may be some security problems when you visit certain URL, the solution Microsoft put in place just isn't right. Having to pass a security warning each time you click on a bunch of links that a trusted friend pasts (event if that's from the same website!), it's just ridiculous. There should be some option to disable this, or AT LEAST something to set a list of trusted websites/friends. There is no point in forcing all users to suffer this, including those who are able to protect themselves. Microsoft wouldn't act differently if they'd want their users to run away from WLM.
A simple warning popping on top of the conversation window when a link is pasted would be as efficient, and much less annoying.
But thank you for sharing your opinion on this.
And I apologize for my probable syntax mistakes
Altough I share your concerns in regards to the smartscreen filtering, the underlying reason why they disabled the hotlinking in messages has been explained in great detail before and is very logic and understandable.
It comes down to, indeed, security. At the time they disabled the links a virus was spreading around the world like wildfire. And, unlike other malwares, this virus was spreading thru various semi-random links. Now, it is possible to transparantly filter out certain links (they did this before), but with this method it was not possible to filter out all the links that this virus (and all ts variants) was using.
Also, because this was a major security threat they had to do something very quickly. And the _only_ option was to disable links all together. This because the use of features like hotlinking, emoticons, sounds, etc are remotely controlled by MS. They
simply need to disable a checkmark in their BigBrotherControlCenter next to 'hotlinking' and hotlinking will be disabled for everyone in an instant.
You can argue that they could implement all kinds of other solutions, but you need to understand that everything else would have required to re-program Messenger. And that takes a huge amount of time, testing, etc... By the time they had done that we would already be a few months further while the virus would be happily spreading around. Not to mention that everybody had to update their Messenger for this change to take effect. Again, a security risk.
Disabling hotlinking in messages was indeed the best solution they could do.
As for the smartscreen filtering itself, yeah, it has some major issues (eg
ome urls being crippled), but it is also a 'second chance' solution like someone called it; it may not work for some who automatically click 'continue' without reading anyways, but it is a good protection without being too restrictive for others.
For each solution there are benefits and downsides; unfortunatly there is no good-for-everyone solution when it comes down to security. For some there is too much security, for others there is too little. And yes, unfortunatly some users need to be protected against themselfs.
But anyways, this is a whole different discussion which is already held in other threads... We better stay on topic here: suggestions for Plus!5...
As such: I'm not sure if Plus! would be able to do anything about the disabling of hotlinking in messages. Without going too technical, the reason is that something like that needs to be done before or while Messenger makes contact with the servers. It's quite possible that it can't be disabled/enabled on the fly. But I may be wrong with this. As for the smartscreen stuff: I'm not sure about that one either. Although, without knowing exactly how it is implemented in Messenger, it might be possible to disable the redirecting, but it wont be easy in that case I suppose. So don't get your hopes up too much.
/ 
