[MlMt] links ending in $

[Benny Kjær Nielsen]

On 25 Nov 2021, at 19:06, aisrael wrote:

> After several verifications, this seems to be be a weird issue : I 
> attach a screenshot of a mail that displays that strange behaviour 
> (image 1) : when you click on the link, nothing happens as the $ sign 
> does not get included.
>
> I then checked the appearance in Mail, Outlook and the Webmail, and 
> the $ is now included in the URL, which means you can click on it. 
> Then I forwarded the dubious email as an attachment with Mailmate, and 
> it is now shown correctly in the attachment.

This is likely because it was properly wrapped in HTML tags when 
forwarded. In that case, MailMate won't be involved in link detection. 
This only happens for plain text (or plain text segments in HTML). It's 
heuristic behavior in any email client and it should work better in the 
next update of MailMate.

> But to make things weirder (at least to me),I asked my correspondent 
> whether his address includes a $, but it turns out his actual website 
> address is https://www.normalesup.org/~adanchin,
> Which for some reason ends up here as :  
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.normalesup.org/*adanchin__;fg!!JFdNOqOXpB6UZW0!75VXTITbKIuEkUszAgRESBwDFxsBvVA_gpxn-KRscdeSmysMEwovF2Guj84utNpFQuBH$ 
>    when I receive it.

Somewhere between you and your correspondent there's a filter which 
alters the content of your emails. Given the `urldefense` domain used, 
it appears that it's some kind of security issue which changes links 
such that if you click on them then you'll be redirected through a 
different server. This server can then block, e.g., any known phishing 
URLs.

On the other hand, these rewrites could also be used to track when and 
where you follow links in emails (similar to image tracking 
techniques)...

-- 
Benny
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