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Thanks - that makes sense but what's to stop the same thing happening with coded posts that the forum doesn't realise are links? Or for that matter the malware addon just going straight to the bad links and cutting out the forum completely?
Dramatic_Hammer-
We provide a technical solution.
If a user is duped and technology we provide has nothing to do with it... i.e if someone uses strange language to say "Go to this other web site by typing this in manually and buy some viagra"... then the user's behaviour is not our problem though we'll try and do something about the person that posted it if it gets reported to us.
If a user has malware already on their OS or in their browser, and this malware does some trickery that doesn't involve the forum in any way... then this is clearly the fault and blame of the malware.
Neither scenario would affect us as a company, as the entity providing this technical service.
But... if we didn't take adequate precautions, if we let spam and malware through, if the forum participated in any attack... then people would blame us for it. It could be argued that we were in part complicit by not actively preventing it even though we could take steps... and whilst that argument might not succeed... we do know how to take these steps, and so we do.
For the vast majority of how people use a website, the steps we've taken do not impact behaviour. But they do help us get a handle on the bad stuff, whilst also helping us to solve the other things I mentioned.
Velocio
If the full URL is spam/malware/malicious, and it is in the web page in full (even in the tooltip)... then it is really easy for malware or browser extensions to use that URL.
i.e. To send the end user directly to the bad destination without us being able to stop it from happening.
I've no doubt at all, that were that to happen, then we would get the blame... not the people running the malware and posting the spam.