Re: whitelisting links (was Re: misconception in SPF)

>    2.  Have the email client distinguish between links that are
> whitelisted and those that aren't.

I'm with Paul in that I think the web browser and/or a web proxy is a more appropriate place to do that.

Other than the fact that they are simply better at anything web-related (they can, for instance, do some heuristics on the actual content that's being delivered by the web server), I'm worried that a "this link is fine" message displayed by a MUA is easily confused with "this email is fine", which I don't think is desirable.

Also, the overwhelming majority of websites are completely fine and harmless, yet most are probably too obscure to end up on some kind of whitelist, let alone a personalised one. So I think you're going to have a lot of collatoral damage.

Having said all this, maliciious links in email are a serious problem today. Whenever I need a link to the Blackhole exploit kit for research purposes, I simply dig into my spam folder and look for a fake Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter/YouTube/UPS email. More often than not it contains such a link.

Martijn.

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