Shoutbox

Disableing clicking links in my opinion is childish, just becuase they cant click it doesn't mean they wont click on it. Yeah, it will reduce it slightly but not much.

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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

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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 pastes (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

Malware affects everyone Even the most trustable friend can be infected and you'll never know.
Each warning should serve as a second chance to check the url and see if it's safe, it's better than be sorry after you click something you didn't check before or misclicked it, as in a conversation appearing suddenly and the link appearing right under where you'd click.
Now, "suffer this, including those who are able to protect themselves": these people are the ones that liked the feature, it seems. You aren't able to protect yourself if you call an extra security layer a "pain" and "something uneeded". And who reads those warnings that pop up there in time to prevent something?

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Originally posted by blessedguy
Malware affects everyone Even the most trustable friend can be infected and you'll never know.
Each warning should serve as a second chance to check the url and see if it's safe, it's better than be sorry after you click something you didn't check before or misclicked it, as in a conversation appearing suddenly and the link appearing right under where you'd click.
Now, "suffer this, including those who are able to protect themselves": these people are the ones that liked the feature, it seems. You aren't able to protect yourself if you call an extra security layer a "pain" and "something uneeded". And who reads those warnings that pop up there in time to prevent something?

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Those who don't read the warnings that pop up there, probably won't read the smartscreen warning either. It just triggers a mechanical click on the "continue" button. That's probably the same problem with Vista and Seven's UAC: it gets so annoying that most people end up disabling it.

Now a good solution to avoid your misclick example would be to set a delay of, say, 2 seconds before a link become clickable. This method is already used in some dialog boxes.

But I'm surprised to read that some people appreciate this feature. I assume that contrary to what I've written before, it's not that ridiculous. But I still think it's badly implemented.

EDIT: oh, and still another criticism... The smartscreen filter messes up with some websites like 4chan which checks the referrer to avoid hotlinking...

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Originally posted by Vlavv

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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

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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

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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 (egome 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.

Hi there. first of all, pardon me if this request has been made before, I just didn't find it here.

One of my biggest disappointments with the new version of messenger is the fact that it's missing the option to view a list of people who have added you to their contacts list. I realize it's possible to check whether or not you're in someone's live profile connections list, but that doesn't always tell you everything.

So I'd appreciate it very much if the new version of Messenger Plus! includes a feature to get a list of all the people who have you in their list.

Cheers!

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Originally posted by Aasemoon
So I'd appreciate it very much if the new version of Messenger Plus! includes a feature to get a list of all the people who have you in their list.

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Plus! used data Microsoft stopped providing, so it is impossible unless Microsoft starts updating that information again.

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Originally posted by blessedguy

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Originally posted by Aasemoon
So I'd appreciate it very much if the new version of Messenger Plus! includes a feature to get a list of all the people who have you in their list.

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Plus! used data Microsoft stopped providing, so it is impossible unless Microsoft starts updating that information again.

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Thanks for your response. Well, to be honest the reason I made this request is because I'm not all that certain whether Microsoft has in fact stopped providing this data. I have an older version of WLM installed on another system, and at least up to a couple of days ago I know that the "who's added me" feature was still working. So that makes me think that the data is still being provided, but for some reason or the other the feature has just not been implemented on the WLM 2011. [It would not be the first time.]

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Originally posted by Aasemoon
Thanks for your response. Well, to be honest the reason I made this request is because I'm not all that certain whether Microsoft has in fact stopped providing this data. I have an older version of WLM installed on another system, and at least up to a couple of days ago I know that the "who's added me" feature was still working. So that makes me think that the data is still being provided, but for some reason or the other the feature has just not been implemented on the WLM 2011. [It would not be the first time.]

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It still is shown, but you might notice it is wildly innacurate

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Originally posted by blessedguy

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Originally posted by Aasemoon
Thanks for your response. Well, to be honest the reason I made this request is because I'm not all that certain whether Microsoft has in fact stopped providing this data. I have an older version of WLM installed on another system, and at least up to a couple of days ago I know that the "who's added me" feature was still working. So that makes me think that the data is still being provided, but for some reason or the other the feature has just not been implemented on the WLM 2011. [It would not be the first time.]

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It still is shown, but you might notice it is wildly innacurate

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Yes it is inaccurate but not completely random. If someone add/removes you to their list through the messenger itself, the changes show up correctly. If they do it through the Live Profile, then it most probably will not... which actually makes sense. I suppose this can be the reason the feature is no longer there.