4 ms·

This is already an issue with a number of common(-ish) extensions a non-tech person might realistically encounter: .ai (Illustrator), .ps (Photoshop), .md, (Mar

by arp242 4y ago

This is already an issue with a number of common(-ish) extensions a non-tech person might realistically encounter: .ai (Illustrator), .ps (Photoshop), .md, (Markdown), .mobi (E-books) There's also some that are less commonly encountered by non-tech people, but still fairly common in the tech world (depending on the person of course): .sh, .rs, .cab, .java, .py, .org, .pl, .pm, .target, .pub That's just from a quick check from what I recognized from memory; I didn't feel like writing the code to also print out the MIME type and description and there may be more. Here's a full list of conflicts I generated from my /usr/share/mime/globs and the TLD list from ICANN, 74 conflicts in total: https://gist.github.com/arp242/ca24b58eaf37184b03e626c8e4093082 https://gist.github.com/arp242/ca24b58eaf37184b03e626c8e4093... Is .zip more common? No doubt, so it does become worse, but this confusion already exists, and will no doubt grow in the future with further proliferation of tlds and file extensions. Basically, we should probably do something about this regardless, although I'm not entirely sure what.

donmcronald 4y ago
IMO the correct solution is giving users adequate information. Instead of downloading files automatically, the browser should prompt. "You're about to download a file from the internet...". Of course we all know what will really happen is Google will continue to use Chrome to obfuscate the way the internet works and all of the big tech companies will sell "solutions" to the problems they're causing. Most people will end up completely dependent on Google's Advanced Protection Program, Microsoft's SmartScreen Filter, etc..
- joseda-hg 4y ago
  Wasn't that default behaviour a while ago? I believe they changed it because most people saw the dialog twice and then got annoyed and deactivated it
- zamadatix 4y ago
  For most people (i.e. those who use email via web) you're downloading a file from the internet either way. There isn't really a good way, in my opinion, to convince people to validate where the file downloaded from. Things like prompts are just as likely to become as ignored as the URL in the downloads status or the "this file is from the internet" warning. It's unrealistic to expect a person to check 999 times so on the 1,000th time they can catch the 1 time they were being tricked (or whatever numbers you want to use, point is it's just too rare compared to how often it does what they want and bugs them).
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Adequate information is never stuff written in transient prompts. Yes, the solution is giving users adequate information. That means telling them whether it's a link or a file, whether the file will execute, or what program will open it.
- arp242 4y ago
  It's not at all clear to me this is really a major issue. I'm not exactly the "average user" and I'm guessing you're not either; so I can't really judge from my experience and preferences. I did spend 4 years as a tech in a local computer shop over ten years ago, and my experience is that people will click and do the oddest things regardless, but I'm not sure if that's really all that representative either because the more savvy users didn't really come to us with software problems. I think this is a "further research needed". For starters, how often will these situations actually occur in the first place? This may be less often than feared. How many users will be confused? This may be less than one might assume. Is just downloading a .zip file actually a security risk or "merely" confusing? That would make a big difference. What design will help with that? This may be counter-intuitive.

by arp242 4y ago

donmcronald 4y ago

IMO the correct solution is giving users adequate information. Instead of downloading files automatically, the browser should prompt. "You're about to download a file from the internet...". Of course we all know what will really happen is Google will continue to use Chrome to obfuscate the way the internet works and all of the big tech companies will sell "solutions" to the problems they're causing. Most people will end up completely dependent on Google's Advanced Protection Program, Microsoft's SmartScreen Filter, etc..

joseda-hg 4y ago
Wasn't that default behaviour a while ago? I believe they changed it because most people saw the dialog twice and then got annoyed and deactivated it
zamadatix 4y ago
For most people (i.e. those who use email via web) you're downloading a file from the internet either way. There isn't really a good way, in my opinion, to convince people to validate where the file downloaded from. Things like prompts are just as likely to become as ignored as the URL in the downloads status or the "this file is from the internet" warning. It's unrealistic to expect a person to check 999 times so on the 1,000th time they can catch the 1 time they were being tricked (or whatever numbers you want to use, point is it's just too rare compared to how often it does what they want and bugs them).
marcosdumay 4y ago
Adequate information is never stuff written in transient prompts. Yes, the solution is giving users adequate information. That means telling them whether it's a link or a file, whether the file will execute, or what program will open it.
arp242 4y ago
It's not at all clear to me this is really a major issue. I'm not exactly the "average user" and I'm guessing you're not either; so I can't really judge from my experience and preferences. I did spend 4 years as a tech in a local computer shop over ten years ago, and my experience is that people will click and do the oddest things regardless, but I'm not sure if that's really all that representative either because the more savvy users didn't really come to us with software problems. I think this is a "further research needed". For starters, how often will these situations actually occur in the first place? This may be less often than feared. How many users will be confused? This may be less than one might assume. Is just downloading a .zip file actually a security risk or "merely" confusing? That would make a big difference. What design will help with that? This may be counter-intuitive.