Invalid ipfs:// links are redirected to dweb.link

[MicahZoltu]

Describe the bug
When I try to navigate to ipfs://example in Firefox with IPFS Companion installed, I am sent to https://dweb.link/ipfs/example rather than my local gateway.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Install Firefox
2. Install IPFS Desktop
3. Install IPFS Companion
4. In IPFS companion settings remove all references to dweb.link, set a local gateway, and disable automatic mode.
5. Type ipfs://example in your address bar and press enter
6. Notice that you are redirected to dweb.link

Expected behavior
When I tell IPFS companion to use my local gateway or a specific gateway, it doesn't sometimes use a public gateway.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Windows
• Browser: Firefox
• Version: 2.20.1

Additional context
This is also a privacy problem as it is sending information about what I am trying to lookup on IPFS to dweb.link. If I configure IPFS Companion to use my local gateway, this may be for privacy reasons and that is negated by this bug.

[whizzzkid]

Thanks for creating this issue @MicahZoltu, this indeed sounds like a serious concern. I tried reproducing this issue on both firefox and chrome and got redirected to my local node as per the steps described.

To investigate further can you please:

• share versions of firefox, ipfs-desktop and ipfs-companion that you have installed on your machine.
• validate your localgateway online and connected? one simple way is to visit webui at :/webui#/, which for a ipfs-desktop node look something like: http://127.0.0.1:5001/webui#/
• validate ipfs-companion has permissions, you can go to about:addons in firefox, click ipfs companion and see under the permissions tab.
• share other relevant info that you think might be useful to reproduce this.

[MicahZoltu]

Important Note: This redirect does not occur when I put in a valid IPFS hash for the URL. It only happens if I use an invalid IPFS hash (like example).

Firefox: 108.0.2 (64-bit)
IPFS Desktop: 0.24.0
Kubo: 0.15.0
IPFS Companion: 2.20.1

Local gateway is on and working, and if I navigate to a valid ipfs://<cidv1> url everything works as expected.

All permission checkmarks are green in about:addons > IPFS Companion.

I have a personal non-local gateway configured in IPFS Companion as the Default Public Gateway and Default Public Subdomain Gateway. The configured non-local gateway doesn't actually support subdomains, I configured it mainly because I didn't want any untrusted URLs configured.

dweb.link does not appear anywhere in IPFS Companion or IPFS Desktop settings.

I do not have any other add-ons installed other than a password manager (unlikely to be registered as an ipfs scheme handler). In an InPrivate browser window with only IPFS Companion enabled for private browsing (so password manager is disabled), the same issue occurs.

[MicahZoltu]

I think I located the source of the problem:

It appears that IPFS Companion has setup a protocol handler that points at dweb.link (perhaps on install?) and it didn't remove it when I removed dweb.link.

[MicahZoltu]

Note: I'll leave these set for now in case there is value in debugging them. I'm also not sure if I delete them if they will just come back on the next update or something.

[whizzzkid]

@MicahZoltu thanks for more context, I am not seeing the same behaviour. I have the same protocol handler registered on my FF, but the action is selected to be ipfs-desktop it still redirects to my ipfs-desktop which opens the url in my default browser which loads the right path on my local node. If I change this to IPFS Companion, the behaviour changes and it automatically redirects to the localnode:

What's the action selected in your settings?

example: ipfs://bafybeictaik66c4r7ymn5g5zburzhedqafv6na2upkh5c6ukoojphu5qra/ -> IPFS-Desktop -> http://127.0.0.1:8081/ipfs/bafybeictaik66c4r7ymn5g5zburzhedqafv6na2upkh5c6ukoojphu5qra/