File System Links & Images

File system urls begin with `file://`. These urls are paths to locations on your computer and are not accessible to anyone but you. Recently, we've seen instances where these file system urls have been used for both links and images. For images, we believe this is happening from copy/pasting or dragging & dropping images from the file system or Outlook emails directly into the content editor. For links, we believe the same thing is happening but with file system & Outlook locations.

In an attempt to prevent links and images from being inserted into content in the future we're adding checks for such urls when copying & pasting and dragging & dropping into the content editor.

With this now in place, when links are dragged & dropped or copy/pasted into the content editor and they go to a file system url, the link will be removed and just the text for the link will remain. Images on the other hand containing a file system url will be completely removed, as there's nothing usable to keep.

When this does happen, warnings will be displayed in the top-right corner of your screen. An example of one of these warnings is below. Checks for file system links have been added to the content creator and build.

Url Defense Links

In addition to file system links, we've also noticed Proofpoint Url Defense links have been getting used as well. Links received within emails are routed through Proofpoint so that Proofpoint can verify the url is safe before it reaches you in your inbox. In some cases, these have been entered for links and advertisements by copy & pasting links from emails. Below is what one of these links looks like.

When clicked, these do take the user to the correct final destination, however, Google Amp considers these links invalid. Additionally, these links may expire after some time and stop working.

To prevent either of these situations, we've added a link check for these url defense links. When one of these links is entered, we'll strip out the Proofpoint Url Defense portion and replace it with the underlying link. When this happens, you'll be notified by a warning in the top-right corner of your screen. Please verify the link's correctness when this does occur.

This check has been added to the content creator, build, and the ad create/update form.