Shoutbox

the andyman raised the point what control this third party company has over a conversations. Do they have a copy, do they have access to them? Can someone read what I say over Messenger?

The blocking system is awful, its ineffective and causes more annoyances than the actual viruses it is attempting to stop spreading.

quote:

---

Originally posted by absorbation
the andyman raised the point what control this third party company has over a conversations. Do they have a copy, do they have access to them? Can someone read what I say over Messenger?

---

I hope no!!!

(But I'm almost sure they can)

quote:

---

Originally posted by .Lou
This makes sense, though I find it rather odd that the (for now anonymous) third-party company blocks out these kinds of domains without firstly investigating. Surely someone there knows that websites like googlepages.com, ebuddy.com, mediafire.com, and youtube.com are perfectly safe to use.

---

Dunno if it was "without investigation". But good point though. On the other hand, pages like googlepages.com could contain potential harmfull stuff. Then again, so can the entire internet....

As they say so themselfs, they block pages (or entire sites) based upon a lot of criteria. So, it might have been possible that there were viri spreading around which were located on some googlepages.com sites. And since legit links to googlepages weren't send/used that often in Messenger compared to the amount of malicious links being used, it might be logic in some way to block the entire range. Too bad for the few hundreds who used legit links to googlepages.com, compared to the thousands/millions who would otherwise would recieve viri... It's common sense... (if that is/was the case)...

If it is good practice to block domains or not, dunno. For both methods (blocking individual pages vs. blocking entire domains) something can be said. Is blocking needed at all? Personally I think it is, especially by default (but with an 'advanced' option to turn it off maybe). But this also means that they must walk on a very thin line as to what to block and what not.

But, I would be surprised if the only reason would be "competitors". That simply doesn't make much sense in a bussiness POV. Also because MS is getting very carefull when it comes down to competition and anti-trust, etc... especially in Europe (which has still the biggest market share for Messenger).

quote:

---

On another note, if they block out domains that are sent out too much, why is google not blocked? If they can avoid google's block, then they can avoid this kind of block as well.

---

This shows to me that this isn't about "competition", but all about security.

Like I said above, googlepages.com are websites from individuals which could contain malicious programs for people to download. Google.com is just a search engine and thus not as much a security threat...

As for why YouTube was blocked? Dunno, I don't see immediatly what that got todo with security either. But then again, so did Microsoft, and thus they fixed it....

Let us just hope that other (stupid) blocks will get lifted too. Maybe with the aid of enough people like you and me who report the blocks via the official feedback forms (which is the proper way to complain about them).... As that is what also happened with the YouTube issue (which quite frankly didn't even lasted 1 day, so what's the big problem actually? -all of a sudden MS is the big devil on lots of blogs because of this- ): instead of people kind of ignoring it (like with the other blocks) and only complaining about it once in a while on their own forums were MS doens't see the -not that many- complaints, they started to complain to the proper official channels, MS saw it, and fixed it.... and even blogged about it themselfs...

At the end of the day, you get what you paid for.

quote:

---

Originally posted by absorbation
the andyman raised the point what control this third party company has over a conversations. Do they have a copy, do they have access to them? Can someone read what I say over Messenger?

---

No...

That MS-partner maintains the block list. Maintaining a list does not mean they can read conversations.

Even having access to the MS-servers (which nobody said they had; you can perfectly maintain a list without the need to have access to the actual servers), does not mean they can access what is being send. That would actually not make any sense either; why would they need access to the actual data being send?

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevised

quote:

---

Originally posted by absorbation
the andyman raised the point what control this third party company has over a conversations. Do they have a copy, do they have access to them? Can someone read what I say over Messenger?

---

No...

That MS-partner maintains the block list. Maintaining a list does not mean they can read conversations.

Even having access to the MS-servers (which nobody said they had; you can perfectly maintain a list without the need to have access to the actual servers), does not mean they can access what is being send. That would actually not make any sense either; why would they need access to the actual data being send?

---

Actually the company who is managing the block list does indeed have access only to the links being sent via messages. They however have no access to anything else, such as who sent it, what time it was sent, etc etc etc.

Actually that blocking isn't really perfect, because a simple workaround for the blocked links to go through is simply separate the http: from the rest of the link with a space and the link will go through, you just simply tell your contact to copy and paste the link in the browser and remove the space.

for example this link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?fgyy5vmmt2d (not existent link don't click on it)

like that msn blocks it but if you type it like this:

http: //www.mediafire.com/?fgyy5vmmt2d the link will go through since it gets turned into a normal text as if you're just sending a message without any links on it.

True it makes your contact work a bit more since he or she has to copy and paste it on the browser and remove the space but is the only way for now to send some links that shouldn't have been blocked.