On Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 12:20 PM, Konstantin Olchanski <olcha...@triumf.ca> wrote: > On Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 09:39:37AM -0500, Glenn Cooper wrote: > Some people dislike these email manglers because they replace obviously > safe URLs (zzzz://triumf.ca, > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__bnl.gov&d=DwIBAg&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=9MsrWO_OsZsUg1N098OjP5FVq11d4xFs7FQSsO0fvOg&s=hNpBcmIgNIJC38WgFxk6q0e-BDk3eAeFQnaJXmIOK3Y&e=, > zzzz://gnal.gov, etc) > with magical "eat me" cookies. > > Maybe these manglers cut down on nigerian fishing, but I think there > is a net decrease in security because everybody is forced > to click links without knowing exactly where they go.
Another failure of using such a service is that the URLs are now mangled inside the ProofPoint URL. When at some point in the future the ProofPoint service is discontinued or is no longer used by Fermilab (it will happen, some day, one way or another) the URLs that were originally submitted are lost. A "safe" link and a non-HTML-sanitized copy of the original URL would be a welcome safeguard from being hostage to the service for a clean copy of the URL for several reasons, even to just know what the URL is targeting along with having the option to not follow the link through the URL filtering service for tracking and privacy concerns. expressed by Konsantin.
