

Displaying Web Bugs: Gmail vs. Apple Mail - chmars

The Gmail option 'Ask before displaying external content' does not work as expected, i.e. external content such as web bugs gets displayed anyway.  The linked screenshot shows an example:<p>http://oi48.tinypic.com/2uqoroj.jpg<p>I used Reeder to mail myself a New York Times article. I usually use Mailplane to access Gmail and Mailplane enjoys free web access. After an update of my personal firewall Little Snitch, however, I had to reassign access rights and Little Snitch showed a request to nytimes.com. That is what I call 'displaying external content WITHOUT asking' …<p>The issue is reproducible in Mailplane as well as in Gmail in common browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Safari.<p>Apple Mail, by the way, does not try to load the same external content:<p>http://oi47.tinypic.com/6ieams.jpg
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nodata
I can't reproduce this using <https://emailprivacytester.com/>

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chmars
I cannot either but the requests are there. <https://emailprivacytester.com/>
might test only for known web bugs and not for simple requests.

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mike-cardwell
I am the author. Yes, there are going to be things it doesn't catch. I've
created tests for as many different leaks that I could think of. Please send
over the full source of one of these emails so I can figure out what is
causing the leak and add another test.

[edit] I imagine this is a problem in Mailplane rather than GMail. It is the
client making the request it shouldn't be. Perhaps it's some sort of pre-
fetch. The emailprivacytester.com app should still notify users of this leak
though.

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chmars
The problem is not limited to Mailplane and is reproducible with every
available browser access to Gmail (Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari) on
several Macs.

I am wondering if this issue is limited to our Mac setup or if other users are
affected as well. Most users would probably never notice since even if you use
a personal firewall, you usually grant your browser full Internet access on
the relevant ports.

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ColinWright
Clickables:

<http://oi48.tinypic.com/2uqoroj.jpg>

<http://oi47.tinypic.com/6ieams.jpg>

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chmars
Thanks!

How can I make URLs clickable in new postings? In comments, URLs seems to
become clickable automatically.

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ColinWright
From <http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html> ...

    
    
        How do I make a link in a question?
    
        You can't. (This is to prevent people from using
        this method as a way of submitting a link, but with
        their comments in a privileged position at the top of
        the page.  If you want to submit a link with comments,
        just submit it, then add a regular comment.)

~~~
chmars
Thanks again, I appreciate your help! :)

