Will there ever be something equivalent to a VPN killswitch when opening pdfs?

[DeltaEpsilon19498]

With VPNs, a VPN killswitch prevents ip leaks when the systemwide VPN goes down. This is very useful at preventing mistakes.

However, I notice that when using dangerzone, it is relatively easy to make the mistake of opening up a pdf that has not been cleaned by dangerzone first. I am thinking about the scenario presented in https://dangerzone.rocks/about/, with the election workers getting a malicious file. Even if all of them had dangerzone installed on their computers, it feels like it would be very easy for one of them to make a mistake and open the file without using dangerzone first.

First of all, web browsers now open pdf files by default within the web browser, instead of downloading them to the hard drive. You have to manually change the web browser setting to save the pdf file instead of opening it in the web browser. Then, the file needs to be put through the dangerzone cleaning process without being accidentally clicked on or simply forgotten by a single election worker.

In the future, will there be any way to make sure that a compatible file is never opened before being processed by dangerzone first? Or will this always be something that is susceptible to possible human error? Unfortunately, human error is very easy, as U.S. government officials discovered when they added a journalist to their private Signal group chat by mistake.

[apyrgio]

That's a cool idea, and it's actually really close to a more intermediate step that we want to achieve soon, that of file viewing. Dangerzone is currently a file sanitization tool, that can also open the document after it's done. But it's possible, and we're consciously upgrading the tool behind the scenes towards this direction, to be able to view files with Dangerzone, and let the sanitization happen behind the scenes (see also #424 and #758).

If we manage to make file viewing work, then we can go the extra mile and take a stab at the idea you proposed. We're not there yet, but we're working on it, while juggling other priorities of course.