Forums Bug Reports Feature Removal: Track URLs

Not really a bug report here, but I think it'd be useful if the Track URLs feature was removed. I must admit I didn't even know it existed until a few months ago when somebody was asking why their browser opened everytime someone used a URL in their text - since then there's been a couple of others posting about this [1, 2, 3]. I don't know how it got turned on in any of those cases or why they all seem to have occurred just recently (I assume it isn't on by default otherwise I suppose many more people would have posted about it).

The general lack of prominence of the option (I doubt many people look in the System Menu for such things and obviously none would know to look for "Track URLs" in the helpfile) makes it nearly impossible for someone to turn it off if they somehow turn it on in the first place. Between that, the inherent dangers of opening arbitrary URLs, and the general lack of usefulness of the feature (especially when it can be scripted with a one-liner) it seems like something worth removing.

Obviously if I've misjudged its usefulness and lots of people are using this then there's little point frustrating them by removing it, but from my very limited survey it appears just about no-one knows this feature even exists.

Signed.
This could cause serious damage if it tracks a URL that contains a virus or whatever. Also, I believe this option is rarely used.

I agree it should be removed. It's too dangerous.

~ Edit ~
I should also add that the only time I've ever had to deal with it, is helping others with turning it off. Too many times to count.

Out of interest, does anyone actually use the URL list?

Oh, and signed by the way.

I do.

I do.

Of all of the features in mIRC, you had to pick on this one :-) I usually don't remember who requested which of the thousands of features I've added to mIRC. This particular feature was requested by Tim Berners-Lee and I'm a little hesitant to remove it without an extended, ponderous meditation on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. It's been quite a few years since the request and I'm not sure if they're still using mIRC for W3C online meetings and in particular whether he still finds this feature, or even mIRC, useful himself.

This feature is turned off by default, so I don't think there's a way to turn it on without the user manually selecting it in the window's system menu. As a precaution, I could pop up a warning dialog when they turn it on that explains what it does, in case they do so by mistake. Would that help?

lol :P the meaning of life is 42

but I use it, and if u think its harmful, dont use it... and it will only give u a virus if u click on the link, and even then... u can close ur browser b4 anything gets harmd..warning is not necissary.. but then again, idc.
get mcafee site advisor.. (my best friend :))

I think the warning would be a good idea.

On an unrelated side note:

//var %x = answer to life the universe and everything | //echo -aet $len(%x)

:P~

Fair enough That would be sufficient!

Eegads! I hope TBL doesn't take away my web surfing licence for knocking his feature

I assume the way those people turned it on was by mis-clicking while attempting to access something else in the System Menu so a warning dialog should work fine in preventing that.

I personally think this should be removed, it's a major security risk.

and besides, it would be so easy to script if you did require it.

A warning when selecting it would be good, but it's not real clear what it does in the dialog so there should also be a description in the warning dialog. So maybe the same description as in the help file or a reference to the help file?

how about a warning when u click a link, which you could disable.. because links cant harm u if u dont goto them...

URL warning already exists...
options > catcher > show warning when opening a url

but is not the same as the topic of this thread...

From the help file
Track URLs

This appears in Channel/Query windows, if turned on, mIRC auto-opens websites as they are mentioned in a message.