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You think every email provider crawls links in your email and the inspects the destinations to protect you from spam? That is patently not true, otherwise you
by ljm 5y ago
You think every email provider crawls links in your email and the inspects the destinations to protect you from spam?
That is patently not true, otherwise you would be dealing with utter chaos as you interacted with the internet. If, as the OP claims, Gmail actually _is_ doing this, then that is worrying but it's not the general case.
Google pre-loads and caches images, which many people consider problematic, but they're not pre-fetching URLs.
Refer to these two incredibly recent posts to understand why:
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28192269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28192269 - How to prevent email spoofing, using an unholy combination of silly standards
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28194477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28194477 - Email Authenticity 101: DKIM, Dmarc, and SPF
- sp332 5y agoWell, yes I do believe that. How else do you explain the behavior seen in the article? Outlook.com emails have been doing it for years. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32851044/how-do-i-stop-outlook-com-from-following-links-in-email https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32851044/how-do-i-stop-o... Microsoft also scans links sent in encrypted Skype messages. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/05/think-your-skype-messages-get-end-to-end-encryption-think-again/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/05/think...
- LegitShady 5y agoOffice 365 calls this "safe links" and it's a feature in Outlook and teams. They have a page describing it and everything.