A suggestion for warnings when LibreOffice connects to the Internet

[feedback]

Hi all,

I came here to respond to a thread regarding automatic changes in LibreOffice Calc, but since I’ve created an account, here is one more thought I’ve had based on a real problem I encountered.

When opening a html file LibreOffice Write automatically connects to the internet if there are embedded internet file links. In my opinion, this is a potential security and privacy issue. Loading an external link informs the link’s server that the document was opened and a certain file was requested - this data can then be used without users’ consent. Additionally, something malicious could’ve been downloaded over this.

In my opinion, it would be good if LibreOffice Write and maybe other LibreOffices would issue a warning when anything requests a connection to a third part website. A general internet turn-off switch would also be good.

[mariosv]

[EarnestAl]

Note that the setting shown in the screenshot by @mariosv is the default setting, that is, it asks before connecting

[mikekaganski]

Stealth Mode

[feedback]

@mariosv Hi,

Thanks for your reply! Very unfortunately, this setting does not (!) prevent libreoffice write from connecting to the website or loading images. It does bring up a warning of “the document X contains one or more links to external data. Would you like to change the document, and update all links to get the most recent data” but even if I click “No”, it still loads external images.

How to reproduce:
Download any wikipedia page from Internet Archive (doesn’t work with normal wikipedia pages, maybe because of link structure or something like that; for testing I’ve picked older IA saves of wikipedia pages, from 00s) as “HTML only” - this won’t download any images to your local computer. Then open the html file with LibreOffice Write. And it will load external images from IA even if you would click “No” in a prompt.

My impression about this “update links” setting was that it did not ask whether to connect or not, but whether to update already downloaded files - if no files are downloaded then it will load them externally.

The only way to prevent it is to put a fake local proxy in internet settings - then it won’t connect to the Internet, but that’s a bypass and a direct fix would’ve been good.

@mikekaganski this also works to stop images loading, thanks for the tip. By this I mean going to Options → LibreOffice → Security → “Adjust security related options” → checkmarking “Block any links from documents not among the trusted locations”. Would be cool to make this a default option.
But the “update links when loading” setting does not do anything.