Could someone tell me in what world this sort of assumption could have ever made sense?
Why in God’s name would you design a system that redirects your requests like that? Are the security implications not painfully, frustratingly obvious?
Why in God’s name would you design a system that redirects your requests like that? Are the security implications not painfully, frustratingly obvious?
Besides as far as painfully, frustratingly obvious security implications are concerned you have done much worse before for less end-user benefit like making your main word processing application the world's premier networked virus delivery platform.
lose it to whom though? other software that also doesn't behave the same way?
And, per earlier comments, this wasn't a browser thing - this is a lower level windows hostname resolver issue.
Microsoft prioritized user experience over security for the longest time of their existence and I think they had a little bit of success with it :)