A GET of a webpage shouldn’t have side effects - if it does, your app is broken.
This might be new for Google, but some virus scanners have been prefetching links for decades.
Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without user intervention (2019)
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Re: Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without user intervention (2019)
#12All URLs sent to any major email provider are "clicked" because they are scanning the page to see if it is phishing or otherwise malicious (desktop antivirus and other things will also prescan URLs). It also protects privacy by defeating click tracking on marketing emails. Google will also pre-load all the images in your email too. You shouldn't take any write action to your database just based on a URL being visited…
> Google will also pre-load all the images in your email too
PLEASE disable automatic loading in Gmail settings. Don't let the idiots use unethical, stalkerish e-mail read receipts.
Re: Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without user intervention (2019)
#13All URLs sent to any major email provider are "clicked" because they are scanning the page to see if it is phishing or otherwise malicious (desktop antivirus and other things will also prescan URLs). It also protects privacy by defeating click tracking on marketing emails. Google will also pre-load all the images in your email too. You shouldn't take any write action to your database just based on a URL being visited…
True. Phish testing campaigns in companies that send fake phishing emails to employees, are probably full of inaccurate data due to this.
"Why did you click that link? But, I didn't."
Re: Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without user intervention (2019)
#14HTTP GET requests should not be interpreted by the server as a request to change something. That's what POST, PUT, DELETE and PATCH are for.
Re: Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without user intervention (2019)
#15I always wondered when single-click unsubscribe was going to be a problem because of exactly this. I mean, how do you expect to give a URL to Google and have them just never crawl it?
You make just visiting the URL not everything that needs to be done. So for example, the URL you visit then also runs a small bit of javascript behind the scenes that does the actual unsub action - or the javascript just does a redirect. Or even simpler, you make it so the user has to click a button to POST the request. You've had to do this for years, now. I would assume though, that Gmail is smart enough to go, "oh…
But to be fair, 1-click unsubscribe is a very user friendly thing to do. As a user, if I have to jump through a bunch of hoops to unsubscribe, I'm just going to mark your message as spam and move on with my life.
Re: Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without user intervention (2019)
#16All URLs sent to any major email provider are "clicked" because they are scanning the page to see if it is phishing or otherwise malicious (desktop antivirus and other things will also prescan URLs). It also protects privacy by defeating click tracking on marketing emails. Google will also pre-load all the images in your email too. You shouldn't take any write action to your database just based on a URL being visited…
> Google will also pre-load all the images in your email too PLEASE disable automatic loading in Gmail settings. Don't let the idiots use unethical, stalkerish e-mail read receipts.
Doesn't automatic loading render those read receipts meaningless?
Re: Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without user intervention (2019)
#17All URLs sent to any major email provider are "clicked" because they are scanning the page to see if it is phishing or otherwise malicious (desktop antivirus and other things will also prescan URLs). It also protects privacy by defeating click tracking on marketing emails. Google will also pre-load all the images in your email too. You shouldn't take any write action to your database just based on a URL being visited…
I frequently use depsez[1] for explain analysis and, initially when I'd create a new plan I was sending the delete link alongside in a DM to my coworkers so they could clear the entry when they'd finished with it... until I realized that slack was pre-fetching the link and deleting explains before my coworkers could take a look. This is an interesting case since having the request be a pure `GET` submission is pretty convenient - but yea... there's a good reason to follow the proscribed behaviors for when to use `POST`.
1. https://explain.depesz.com/ great site - I highly recommend it for getting into postgres performance analysis.
Re: Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without user intervention (2019)
#18All URLs sent to any major email provider are "clicked" because they are scanning the page to see if it is phishing or otherwise malicious (desktop antivirus and other things will also prescan URLs). It also protects privacy by defeating click tracking on marketing emails. Google will also pre-load all the images in your email too. You shouldn't take any write action to your database just based on a URL being visited…
> Google will also pre-load all the images in your email too PLEASE disable automatic loading in Gmail settings. Don't let the idiots use unethical, stalkerish e-mail read receipts.
Doesn't gmail's preloading defeat the read receipts? It makes it so every tracking pixel sent to gmail gets loaded (and not by your IP), thereby making it meaningless.
Re: Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without user intervention (2019)
#19I built a small Go web app to do some security testing. When a user registers for an account, I generate a 128-bit secure token and email it to the address they provided (as a URL). Token URLs look like this: /validate/email/1d00a5c2648c211befd33f5a8a7cbfab The token is cryptographically strong and disappears after access. It can't be guessed and no one but the email account holder should click it, but I am seeing th…
Make the user take action after opening the link. Like click a button.
Re: Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without user intervention (2019)
#20In Settings | General, there is an option, "Ask before displaying external images - This option also disables dynamic email." AFAIK this doesn't pertain to links, just images.