84729 - [RFE] Pointer changes to include a 'lock' picture on mouseover of link to secure site

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement)

Description

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From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)
BuildID:    2001070603

It would be nice to have the mouse pointer include a little security 'lock' 
icon when you mouseover a link or button to a secure site.  Sometimes stupid 
sites have secure submission of data (i.e. entering user,password) from an 
insecure site.  It would be nice to know whether you are about to securely or 
insecurely send data without having to enable the annoying and cumbersome 
dialogs which tell you the same thing.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Not currently implemented feature, always reproducible
2.
3.

I guess telling the difference between a link that says 'https' in front of it, 
and a bonafide secure server with a certain security level may present 
problems.  But it would be nice to know even if a link purports to be secure.

Comment 1

[timeless]

?

Comment 2

[Keyser Sose]

Marking NEW.

Comment 3

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

This is an admirable attempt to avoid the need for those pesky security alerts, 
but I don't think it will fly.

Firstly, as the reporter alluded to, an https:// URL is not necessarily an 
encrypted URL, and vice versa. In addition, you have no way of telling in 
advance whether the encryption is 128-bit (reasonable) or 48-bit (pretty 
useless) -- and even if you could, a cursor just can't effectively carry that 
granularity of meaning. So implementing this RFE would introduce a new, albeit 
minor, security risk: misleading users into thinking particular links were 
secure when they were not.

And secondly, a change in cursor just wouldn't be obvious enough, for something 
which the user is probably only going to be hovering over for half a second (if 
that). So, WONTFIX.