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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-
So, just to clarify, even if only the tooltip is showing the full URL it can still be used by the browser, etc even though the link is of micro.sm format before the redirect?
If so, is it possible to screw up the tooltip link (e.g. inserting an extra w so it's wwww.) or is that all too much hassle?
To be honest, my concern is less malware, etc (although that is an issue) but you can often get a good clue as to whether a link is NSFW from the URL. Whether it should or shouldn't be the case, a lot of people browse the forum from work.
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Sorry that probably wasn't clear - I mean that firstly why would someone create malware that uses the forum as a middleman when they've already done the hard part in getting access to the users PC and secondly if someone is creating a two-part attack (malware on computer, links on forum), what's to stop them posting things that don't look like links to the forum software but can still be read by the malware? Is this a problem that has previously existed, given that other sites are happy to display full URLs?
Anyway, I will look out for the 80% tooltips - is there a way you could set it to remove the middle portion of URLs, the parts that humans don't need? IE.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/03/david-cameron-isis-squeezed-out-coalition-force-out-extremists-iraqbecomes
theguardian.com/.../david-cameron-isis-squeezed-out-coalition-force-out-extremists-iraq
aggi
Dramatic_Hammer
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?