They became much more popular after Twitter emerged in the early 2000s with their Tweet character limit – normal-sized URLs took up too much space.īy 2010, a huge number of phishermen were using shortened URLs on Twitter to increase their click-through rates Shortened URLs will usually include the address of the shortening site used, like bit.ly. Shortened URLs are a way to create a simpler URL that is still unique, and there are sites like Tinyurl and Bitly that do this for customers. One widely-used way to spoof URLs is to shorten them. The first two are more commonly found in emails and on social media, the second two in browsers. There are several ways scammers utilize URLs to kick off their insidious activities, so it's good to know what to look for. URL scams appear in any part of a person's digital world where they can receive the information they haven't consciously requested: social media apps, forums, email accounts, text messages and, of course, browser search suggestions. Criminals will go after login details and financial information or attempt to install malware on the device. This is often referred to as 'URL spoofing'. How to identify fake URLsįake URLs are a vital component of 'phishing' – a scam that involves fraudulently obtaining a person's data by posing a legitimate, trustworthy entity. Head over to our how to check if a website is safe guide for more tips on how to stay secure when visiting unknown websites. Typing in '/sport' on the end of the BBC's main web address will always take you to the BBC's Sport page. It lets visitors know which part or page of the website they are on. sport/football – this is the 'subdirectory' part of the URL (and in this case, sub-subdirectory). The 'co' is an abbreviation of commercial. In this case, it shows the site is based in the United Kingdom (UK). It signifies what type of entity the website belongs to. This is the website's name' and is the part of the URL used to identify which brand's website it is. Nowadays, it's entirely superfluous – you don't even need it.ībc – This is the second-level domain name. This is a URL prefix that has always been used for years and still forms part of URLs. There are others too, such as file-transferring protocols like 'ftp:' Usually, this is either HTTP or HTTPS – the one with the 'S' is the secure version. – This is the 'scheme', which dictates the protocol the request is made across. Let's take a basic, legitimate URL as an example: This will allow you to spot a fake website before visiting it. Breaking down a URL: four sectionsīefore discussing how scammers utilize URLs, it's useful to understand their constituent parts. Although none of the URLs in this article should be fraudulent or lead you to scammers – they are just examples made up on the spot – it is still advised to not type any of them into your address bar as they are not actual web addresses. We have to do this, or else showing what to watch out for would prove confusing. All the URLs in this article (apart from the ones in pictures) have been created/invented to make some sort of point about URL scamming.
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