Seems that the url validation is broken. It says that `http://test.example` is not a valid url
Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?
31–40 of 335 posts
Re: Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?
#32Re: Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?
#33Reminds me of working at a company blocking access to eBay because their URL had .dll in there.
Also, we were thought to inspect the URL before clicking on it.
Except that the spam system they use completely mangles the URL...
Re: Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not address the problem at its real source and just block emails entirely?
Because email is not the problem. HTML email is.
I haven't heard that myth recited in years. I thought that it had died.
* https://jdebp.uk/FGA/html-message-myths-dispelled.html#MythA...
Re: Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?
#35All of this reminds me of a hilarious situation at a previous employer. As is standard corporate practice, they used to tell people to inspect links by hovering over them to confirm that they lead to the official website of the sender.
People kept falling for phishing links though, so they got a Trend Micro device to scan emails, which also rewrote every link in it to point to their URL scanning service, which means every link now looks like https://ca-1234.check.trendmicro.com/?url=...; I guess no one would be allowed to click on any link in an email at that company.
Of course, their URL rewrites also broke a good number of links, so you'd wake up to a production incident, and then have to get your laptop, log in manually to Pagerduty/Sentry or what have you, and look up the incident details from the email...
Re: Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?
#36All of this reminds me of a hilarious situation at a previous employer. As is standard corporate practice, they used to tell people to inspect links by hovering over them to confirm that they lead to the official website of the sender. People kept falling for phishing links though, so they got a Trend Micro device to scan emails, which also rewrote every link in it to point to their URL scanning service, which means…
I had the opposite funny experience. When I worked for Global MegaCorp, they would occasionally send out phishing emails and if you clicked on a link it would be recorded and you would have to do trainings if you got fooled a couple times. Eventually everyone learned to stop clicking on links on emails. That's good. However, they sent out a yearly survey to get feedback from all the employees and no one clicked the link so they had to send out follow up emails saying the original emails are legit and it's ok to click the links in them.
Re: Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?
#37All of this reminds me of a hilarious situation at a previous employer. As is standard corporate practice, they used to tell people to inspect links by hovering over them to confirm that they lead to the official website of the sender. People kept falling for phishing links though, so they got a Trend Micro device to scan emails, which also rewrote every link in it to point to their URL scanning service, which means…
I got this email from AWS regarding my personal account.
Greetings from AWS,
There are upcoming changes in how you will be receiving your AWS Invoices starting 9/18/2025. As of 9/18/2025, you will receive all AWS invoices from “no-reply@tax-and-invoicing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com”. If you have automated rules configured to process invoice emails, please update the email address to “no-reply@tax-and-invoicing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com”.
This was brain dead. If I saw an email with that sender, I would think it was a scam. They had to walk it back.
For context, I get random other emails about things like Lambda runtime deprecation from “no-reply-aws@amazon.com” which looks a lot more official.
And “aws-marketing-email-replies@amazon.com”
Re: Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?
#38Re: Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?
#39All of this reminds me of a hilarious situation at a previous employer. As is standard corporate practice, they used to tell people to inspect links by hovering over them to confirm that they lead to the official website of the sender. People kept falling for phishing links though, so they got a Trend Micro device to scan emails, which also rewrote every link in it to point to their URL scanning service, which means…
I had the opposite funny experience. When I worked for Global MegaCorp, they would occasionally send out phishing emails and if you clicked on a link it would be recorded and you would have to do trainings if you got fooled a couple times. Eventually everyone learned to stop clicking on links on emails. That's good. However, they sent out a yearly survey to get feedback from all the employees and no one clicked the l…
I’m designing a new phishing campaign that sends a pre-email telling the user they’re getting a legitimate email with then sending the phishing test email with that subject.
My company does this too by the way. Usually for external things like surveys they send a pre-email.
Re: Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because email is not the problem. HTML email is.
I haven't heard that myth recited in years. I thought that it had died. * https://jdebp.uk/FGA/html-message-myths-dispelled.html#MythA...
"The message format is not dangerous. It is the message viewers that are dangerous in this particular regard."
Ah, I see. We should allow HTML but display it as plain text.