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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William J McBorrough is a Security Expert with many years of success Managing, Designing, and Implementing medium and large enterprise Physical and Information Technology Security Solutions. His experience spans the spectrum from small e-commerce start-ups to multi-campus state and federal agencies to global financial sector organizations. He is on the faculty of various universities including University of Maryland University College, EC-Council University, George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community College where he conducts research and teach graduate and undergraduate courses relating to cybersecurity, cybercrime, cyberterrorism, and information security and assurance. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Computing Engineering with a concentration in digital networks and a Masters of Science in Information Security and Assurance. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified in Risk Information System Control (CRISC), and Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH).He is well versed in personnel, systems and network security risk management. His core competencies include Developing cost effective solutions to enable mission assurance in the following areas: Enterprise Risk Management, IT Governance, Security Organization Development, 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 [...]