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A comment on Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without user intervention (2019). Parent comment

Re:Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without u... by eplanit on Friday August 20, 2021 @09:57AM (#28246020)
This is like the reason I quit using Skype 10 years ago. My colleagues and I noticed the same thing: send a link in a chat, and within seconds to minutes a request (or more) for that URL from a Microsoft server would be logged. Done and bye.
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Re:Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without u... by obuda on Friday August 20, 2021 @10:15AM (#28246235)
Wouldn't be surprised if pretty much every communication service is doing this.

I sent a link to a large file over Viber and immediately some ip connected and started downloading. Stopped at 350mb of around 3.5gb. I get that they want to show thumbnails or whatnot, but they just don't discriminate between content types.

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Re:Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without u... by t00 on Friday August 20, 2021 @10:25AM (#28246388)
That is a great way to do a cross-link DDoS of unsolicited link opening services - send 1000 messages with google links on skype and send 1000 gmail messages with microsoft links there, all gigabytes in size...
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Re:Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without u... by eyelidlessness on Friday August 20, 2021 @11:06AM (#28246879)
Does Skype generate preview images? Most chat clients do at this point. They all have to access the link to get the relevant metadata to do that.
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Re:Gmail is opening and caching URLs within emails without u... by eplanit on Friday August 20, 2021 @11:29AM (#28247164)
Interesting "feature": the user perceives a (real) benefit: preview. But, there is also an unspoken benefit for Microsoft, who can feed their marketing analytics, or AI training data, or ... with what it learns via the chats and links.

I'd be fine if the fine print in the EULA provides a guarantee that the feature scans content solely for generating previews, and that M$ keeps no copy of it, etc....But, I'm sure I'd go blind looking for such text in the EULA.

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