SC Magazine reported on this blog post by the Twitter team about the microblogging service’s plan to “detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter.”
From what I understand, links included in direct messages and e-mail notifications will automatically be shortened using Twitter’s own twt.tl link-shortening service. Users who click the links will be redirected through Twitter to the original links, unless the links are known to be bad (e.g., phishing), in which case the user will be… well, I’m not sure what will happen, as that’s not explained. I’m assuming the user will receive some sort of interstitial warning telling him/her that the requested site was a known scam and s/he shouldn’t visit it.
StopBadware generally supports efforts to warn users about known badware sites, though in this case I’ll leave it to others to debate the trade-off between the security benefits and the privacy implications of redirecting users through Twitter’s servers to visit links. I’m more interested in what users and website owners are able to learn from the new system.
If I click on a link to a blocked site, do I see a warning message? If so, do I see the original URL so that I can choose to ignore the warning and visit the site at my own risk, or at least learn what site was trying to scam me? Does the warning message take advantage of this great teachable moment to educate me about the dangers of phishing and badware websites and how to protect myself? What if it’s my site that’s being blocked, because my site has been hacked wtihout my knowledge? Is there any information to help me understand what’s happening and what I can do about it?
The Twitter blog post doesn’t provide any details or screenshots of its new system, so I don’t know the answer to these questions. Do you? If so, please share in the comments.
