Sunday, November 19, 2006

Good versus Bad Links

Link (or "hyperlink") is an essential element of the web. Every web site or a page is referenced by a link. In our life links appear everywhere: on web pages, in email and SMS messages, in newspapers and magazines, on printed ads in your favorite bar or cafe, and even on billboards on the roads and streets of your city. Links became as usual as mailing addresses and phone/fax numbers, and you may rarely see ads not specifying any internet link along with other contact information.

Hyperlinks are extremely popular, but it is always reasonable toask yourself a question if they are safe to follow. What will happen after you click on a link or type it into your web browser? Will the link get you to a desired web site, or will install a damaging software like virus, adware or spyware on your computer?

Following a "bad" link may result in:
* damage to your computer system (viruses, trojans, exploits, spyware, or adware);
* misuse of your personal or credit card information without your explicit permission.

Below are some tips I find useful to clearly identify if the link is good or bad, i.e. if it is worth to follow.
  1. Never click on links in email messages sent to you by someone you do not know.
  2. When clicking on a link from the web site, place the mouse cursor over it and look into your web browser's status bar (left bottom of the screen) to see where it actually leads to. If the status bar does not show something starting from "http://", "ftp://", or "mailto:", it is more likely a "blind" link. Blind links are widely used by spammers, distributors of virus software, and informational thiefs.
  3. Check the domain name of the link. If you did not hear of the name referenced in a link, the domain name is very long and consists of many (more than 2) popular words delimited by hyphen ("-"), it is more likely to be a "bad" link.
  4. If the link leads to HTML file (has ".html" at the end) it is more likely to be safe, especially if you trust the website containing that link.
  5. The link may be suspicious if it has an "out.cgi" or "in.cgi" in its text. Such links are widely used in "traffic exchange" networks also known as "CJ"s. You will never know where this link leads to exactly.
  6. Links containing many ","'s, or "?"'s are also suspicious. Such links are frequently used in banner networks.
  7. Be extremely selective when following links leading to Photos, Video or Audio files on the internet. Good links to photos are most likely to end with ".jpg" or ".jpeg"; videos - ".avi", ".mpg", ".mpeg", ".ram", ".ra"; audio - ".mp3", ".wav", ".ra". In general I would recommend downloading photos, video and audio files from trusted sources only (and will tell you about some of them in other posts in this blog) because most of video and audio files distributed freely over the internet contain code intended to make damage to your computer system in any way possible.
  8. Do not click on links leading to ".exe" files unless you know for sure it is safe. Exe files are most dangerous ones. If you are not sure - consult your friends or computer specialists whether it makes sense to download the specific "exe" file, or not.

I do not want to say that most of the links are bad, the Internet is full of great, trusted, extremely safe, very valuable links as well. I posted this article just in hope that you will become selective enough to enjoy your positive web experience.

No comments: