Bugzilla

Sorry, but I'm still refusing to accept that adding the full download link or even "hosted on..." has any substantial safety gain.

- I think we all agree that forging the entire FileLink insert is dead-simple, right? I can just copy the HTML, tweak according to my evil purposes, and re-inject into my own message, which will look exactly like TB's original insert, but can have any links of my liking.

- As long as you keep two links, the short link (in a forged mail) can be different from the long link. So there's still 50% evil, and it's more risky than before, because you are giving users a false security that if there's a correct long link below, they don't have to verify the short link above.
- ...hosted on... looks nicer, but actually makes that security fallacy worse - now we're training users to rely on a plain-text explanation below the actual link. That's even easier to forge, and a high-risk behaviour!
- Iow, the only place to verify what the the short link will really give me is the short link itself (by checking the status bar, or copying the URL).


@aleca:
- Short link URL shows up in status bar on hover, so users concerned about safety can look at that. Which actually increases the overall safety as it avoids the long-link-to-explain-short-link fallacy described above.
- Do you know how hard it is to copy a linkified long link from message reader as text using mouse selection? The only easy way is right-click on link > Copy link location. So you could just do that right-click on the *short* link, which is exactly the same, only safer.

Sorry, but I'm still refusing to accept that adding the full download link or even "hosted on..." has any substantial safety gain.

- I think we all agree that forging the entire FileLink insert is dead-simple, right? I can just copy the HTML, tweak according to my evil purposes, and re-inject into my own message, which will look exactly like TB's original insert, but can have any links of my liking.

- As long as you keep two links, the short link (in a forged mail) can be different from the long link. So there's still 50% evil, and it's more risky than before, because you are giving users a false security that if there's a correct long link below, they don't have to verify the short link above.
- ...hosted on... looks nicer, but actually makes that security fallacy worse - now we're training users to rely on a plain-text explanation below the actual link. That's even easier to forge, and a high-risk behaviour!
- Iow, the only place to verify what the the short link will really give me is the short link itself (by checking the status bar, or copying the URL).


@aleca:
- Short link URL shows up in status bar on hover, so users concerned about safety can look at that. Which actually increases the overall safety as it avoids the long-link-to-explain-short-link fallacy described above.
- Do you know how hard it is to copy a linkified long link from message reader as text using mouse selection? The only easy way is right-click on long link > Copy link location. So you could just do that right-click on the *short* link, which is exactly the same, only safer.