Is the addition of "View on Tapatalk" button to e-mail alerts legal?

Floyd R Turbo

Floyd R Turbo

Well-known member
Tapatalk's latest update has integrated a "View on Tapatalk" button into the e-mail alerts, like this:

Tapatalk.webp


The question about it's legality was raised under the resource discussion thread.

So I felt it appropriate to ask the question in the general arena.

Does this raise any kind of potentially legal issue? If so, what are these issues?

If this thread is in the wrong place, feel free to move it.

Please do not turn this into a Tapatalk bashing thread, if you don't like it, I'm sure you already don't like it prior to this. This thread is only to discuss this button addition to the emails and the legality of it (since the question was raised)
 
I do not think it is illegal, it also notifies you when you login to your Site Owner panel, I am sure you can modify the templates to remove it also?
 
It's an issue you will need to take up with the add-on developers.

It's nothing to do with XenForo.

Thread moved from XF feedback to off topic.
 
I raised the question because it was raised in the resource thread and I didn't know how or why it would be illegal. Perhaps something to do with outbound emails and the links provided? Could it be a legal issue if a forum owner didn't know that all their outbound emails generated by the forum contained a link to an external app, rather than just a direct link to the forum?

Could this violate some requirements of the host?

Could it cause an issue with email service providers seeing the link as spam, spoofing, phishing, etc?

Could it cause violation of an agreement between a forum and the website hosting service or outbound email provider?

Could it violate certain laws in certain countries?

I think this is definitely something that affects Xenforo and it's users/site owners, so I can't see how it's off-topic. But I have no issue with it being moved, it will still get discussed all the same,no worries @Brogan!
 
I'm the one that questioned its legality, and I was more referring to this being legal or not against XenForo Ltd itself. Tampering with templates inside the forum and putting copyrights at the bottom of a forum are one thing. But messing with the emails that are being sent from the platform ?

Anyway, didn't mean to create trouble, it just hit me as different than any standard add-on edits.
 
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Dakis said:
But messing with the emails that are being sent from the platform ?
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Why? It's just the result of another template modification after all. I can't see how it affects XenForo as a company, it's not removing their copyright or doing anything bad that affects them.

As for the button addition, it's really up to admins whether it bothers them or not. If it doesn't then there's no problem. If it does then stop using Tapatalk, this isn't the first time they had added things into the add-on without telling forum owners and it won't be the last time.
 
I can't see any illegality here, if you have TT installed then the assumption is you have members using it, so here we have an option in an email to go direct to that content in the app, or view it on the forum. It's the sort of thing I would expect to be the result of a feature request from those who use the app, wanting to go direct from an email to the content in the app, not a browser. I do have strong opinions on this (not positive) but they are outside of the scope of the original question here.
 
Martok said:
Why? It's just the result of another template modification after all. I can't see how it affects XenForo as a company, it's not removing their copyright or doing anything bad that affects them.
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Exactly.

We provide the template modification system which provides the ability to developers to programatically change the contents of Admin, Public or Email templates. Therefore, they have simply used the system the way it is supposed to be used.
 
I don't have it installed but the following should disable this email template intrusion:

1. Enable XF's Debug Mode (under "3. How do I enable debug mode for a specific IP address?")

2. Go to your site's Admin CP, click on the Development tab > Email Templates > Email Template Mods and uncheck the Tapatalk entries
 
That's interesting. Wonder how they actually did it, then.

Might be some other code injection method into the template which is a bit dodgy (in terms of best practice).

Though to be fair, they might be doing it a different way to template modifications to ensure backwards compatibility with XF 1.1 and below.
 
Probably nothing wrong with that. They advertise the add on is compatible with XF 1.1 so that would probably be the best way as template modifications were only added in XF 1.2.
 
Daniel Hood said:
It's in /library/TapaTalk/Mail.php look for "view_on_taptalk" (they use a phrase for it). They're extending the wrapMailContainer function.
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Can you look up which listener in the Admin CP would need to be disabled for that one. I don't have it installed so I can't check...
 
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