Brevity is the soul of…..getting yourself infected with all kinds of nasties!
Would you click on the link : http://www.click-here-to-give-me-access-to-all-your-computer-files.com? No?
How about http://www.bit.ly/12345? Not so threatening, is it?
Yet, those two links could just as easily take you to the same end. The rise of social networking services like Twitter which limits the number of characters a user can post to 140 has made link shortening services even more popular. Services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com allows one to mask a much longer url with a fairly short one. The risks here is that users have now grown accustomed to clicking on links and having no idea what they are clicking on. Oh I’m not so naive as to think most users actually read the entirely url before clicking. I know better. The point here is that those who chose to were able to. With link shortening services today, Cyber-criminals and spammers no longer have to go through the trouble of purchasing a nice-sounding domain name and redirecting your request to to their malicious server. It takes seconds to sign up with one of the free link shortening services and on you go.
I’m certainly not advocating against the use of such services as I use them myself to promote my blog on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN. I would advice that before you click on a shortened link, consider the source. How much do you trust the source? Give a little more thought before clicking.
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About William: William McBorrough is co-founder and President at Washington, DC based Information Technology and Assurance Services Firm Secure Intervention, where he specializes in Security Assessments, Compliance Readiness, IT and Security Management and Cloud Computing Security for both public and private sector enterprises. He is also an Adjunct College Professor teaching Systems Architecture, Networking, Network Attacks and Defense, and Security Program Development courses. He holds CISSP, CISA, and CEH certifications and is pursuing a Phd in Information Technology with a concentration in Information Security and Assurance. |
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[...] them of something particularly interesting just one click away. Naturally the link will be shortened , so they will have no clue where it leads Most will click on it with the confidence that it came [...]