(FWD) Load external content? message seems inappropriate

[krishna e bera]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 07:23:24AM -0400, downie - wrote:
>    > Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:17:13 -0400
>    > From: arma at mit.edu
>    > To: or-talk at freehaven.net
>    > Subject: (FWD) Load external content? message seems inappropriate
>    >
>    > [Forwarding to the list since this address isn't subscribed.
>    >
>    > My first question is: what is the content-type header provided by the
>    > webserver? Perhaps it was something that your browser recognized and
>    > thought it couldn't display by itself?
>    >
>    > My second thought is: this might be a Torbutton bug, and might want
>    > to go into bugs.torproject.org.
>    >
>    > --Roger]
>    >
>    > ----- Forwarded message from owner-or-talk at freehaven.net -----
>    >
>    > Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:11:52 -0500
>    > Subject: Load external content? message seems inappropriate
>    > From: Thomas Anderson <zelnaga at gmail.com>
>    > To: or-talk at seul.org
>    >
>    > I was playing around with Tor Browser to see what it was like and
>    > tried to download a small 1mb file from a server of mine. In the
>    > process, I got the following message:
>    >
>    > ---------------------
>    >
>    > An external application is needed to handle:
>    >
>    > http://domain.tld/path/to/my/file.ext
>    >
>    > NOTE: External applications are NOT Tor safe by default and can unmask
>    you!
>    >
>    > ---------------------
>    >
>    > My question is... why is an external package being loaded? All I
>    > want to do is to download a file via HTTP to my hard drive. I don't
>    > want to open it up in whatever application would be appropriate and
>    > even if I did, it's not as if that application would be the one that
>    > downloads the file - Tor Browser would still download it and just
>    > place it in the Windows temporary directory or where ever.
>    >
>    > All in all, the message seems inappropriate. Sure, if I was
>    > downloading, say, an *.exe, that *.exe might connect me to the
>    > internet, but even then, the message seems misleading, since, at that
>    > point, it's not that an external package is needed to handle the file
>    > so much as the file *is* an external package.
>    >
>    > ----- End forwarded message -----
>    >
> 
>    This is a Torbutton message. Your operating system might automatically
>    open a downloaded file with another application - which might in turn
>    connect to the internet directly.
>    Since Torbutton has no way of knowing what your OS is set up to do, it's
>    an appropriate warning.
>    GD


That happens to me when downloading a file from Sourceforge 
with Torbutton 1.2.2 and Firefox 3.5.4.
It asks the question above and when i click to Launch External Application
Firefox shows the Opening dialog with only the Save or Cancel available.
Perhaps launching a (new in Firefox 3.5) download worker thread 
looks like launching an external application.

The Content-Type header i saw trying this twice was application/octet-stream.
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/bitcoin/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.1.5.rar/bitcoin-0.1.5.rar?use_mirror=mesh
but i also got application/rar a bunch of times.

I tried downloading a .exe file and the header was application/x-msdos-program.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/latest/audacity-win/audacity-win-1.2.6.exe
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