Dear RIPE: Please don't encourage phishing

Sat Feb 11 04:47:42 UTC 2012

Unfortunately that's not under control of those businesses. This plain text email you sent comes across with clickable mailto and http links in your signature in most modern email clients despite you having sent it in plain text. "Helpful" email program defaults won't force people to copy and paste the URL. They just create the hyperlink for people based on the pattern in the plain text message. It seems anything beginning with www or http(s):// will be converted to a clickable link out of convenience to the user. It's always that endless struggle of security vs. convenience...

-Vinny

-----Original Message-----
From: Landon Stewart [mailto:lstewart at superb.net] 
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 7:24 PM
To: Brandon Butterworth
Cc: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Dear RIPE: Please don't encourage phishing

On 10 February 2012 16:09, Brandon Butterworth <brandon at rd.bbc.co.uk> wrote:

> > So it's necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and tell them
> > never to click on a link...
>
> That baby was ugly anyway
>
>
HAHAHA.

My $0.02 on this issue is if the message is rich text I hover over the link
and see where it actually sends me.  If I don't know what that link is then
I don't click it.  Not sure how long it's going to take, probably a
generation, for people to use some sense before mindlessly clicking on
stuff.

Banks and businesses that keep sensitive information in a protected area on
the web for you should start sending messages in PLAIN TEXT so you have to
copy/paste the link if you don't already have it book marked or don't want
to type it.  Sure it's not all flashy and there's no nice pictures and junk
but if you get an email from your bank that's not in plain text and
contains hyperlinks then you'll know it's fake before you even read it.

---
Landon Stewart <lstewart at superb.net <mailto"LStewart at Superb.Net>>
Manager of Systems and Engineering
Superb Internet Corp - 888-354-6128 x 4199
Web hosting and more "Ahead of the Rest": www.superb.net