“Magic links” can end up in Bing search results, rendering them useless (medium.com)

Article summary

The article discusses how "magic links" can end up in Bing search results, rendering them useless. This issue arises when email providers or clients, such as Outlook, scan emails and follow links, which can then be indexed by search engines like Bing. As a result, sensitive information like login tokens can be exposed. The exact mechanisms and implications of this issue are explored in the discussion.

Main themes

• email security
• search engine indexing
• Outlook and Bing
• magic links
• robots.txt limitations
• safelinks and security features

What commenters say

• Running one's own email server may not prevent email links from being followed by clients like Outlook.
• Using a professional email service may be a better option than running one's own server.
• Robots.txt is not a reliable way to exclude pages from search engine indexes, and other methods like noindex headers should be used instead.
• Email providers like Gmail may visit links in emails, but this does not necessarily lead to unintended actions like unsubscribing from newsletters.
• Outlook's scanning of emails can lead to security issues, such as exposing login tokens, and this problem is not limited to the free version of Outlook.
• Using safelinks and other security features can make it difficult to determine whether an email is a phishing attempt or not.
• Training users to disambiguate phishing emails using alt texts can be problematic, as these can be spoofed in other contexts.