Links on your Facebook Wall
We received an email from a reader today about a link on his wife's Facebook wall. The link indicated that a friend had tagged her. When he tried to remove the post from her wall it would not allow removal. He reported it as spam. Apparently a friend of hers clicked on the link and got infected. The link point to bitlyDOTcom and have random file names. Let this serve as a reminder to everyone not to click on links until you have checked out the source. As for Bitly - I would use extreme caution with any links identified as source bitlyDOTcom. This is a website redirector that allows the link to be shortened, shared and tracked. Even if you don't get malicious programs installed, do you really want to be tracked????
Thanks to our reader Paul for the email reminder and information.
Deb Hale
Comments
No Love.
Jul 30th 2011
1 decade ago
Alex
Jul 30th 2011
1 decade ago
Why should I trust bit.ly or any other shortening service? The fact that they use SURBL or any other tool is never a reason to trust anyone hiding URL's.
Shorteners can be great tools for twitter and facebook pilots on small devices. But I will not expose my company and my family to them.
Thanks for the reminder, I have added all shorteners to my blocking list.
Jack
Jul 31st 2011
1 decade ago
Kirk
Jul 31st 2011
1 decade ago
Kirk
Jul 31st 2011
1 decade ago
OldDad
Jul 31st 2011
1 decade ago
scripting that allows these malware sites to install by just visiting
them. Protects in other ways, too.
Charley Horse
Jul 31st 2011
1 decade ago
I don't see the fascination with short URIs anyway, except as a workaround for the dumb requirement of Twitter to put URIs inside of a text string. For other purposes, typing 8-16 alphanumeric characters on a mobile device is still going to be fiddly and impossible to memorise, and much easier methods exist for sharing a URI of any length, such as 2D barcodes, or shared clipboard software between networked (Bluetooth, WLAN) devices.
Steven Chamberlain
Jul 31st 2011
1 decade ago
Unless you use a "revealer" like the Xpnd.it one, then you haven't got a clue what you are clicking on.
Also general lay people wouldn't know what they are clicking on even if they did know the real address they were going to. But then that's a whole different story.
amilroy
Aug 2nd 2011
1 decade ago