As noted by security researcher Will Dormann, some posts on X purport to lead to a legitimate website, but actually redirect somewhere else. In Dormann’s example, an advertisement posted by a verified X user claims to lead to forbes.com. When Dormann clicks the link, however, it takes him to a different link to open a Telegram channel that is, “helping individuals earn maximum profit in the crypto market,” he said. In short, the “Forbes” link leads to crypto spam

      • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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        9 months ago

        For a long time Twitter and Facebook were what you made them. When it was mostly personal acquaintances, and later tight communities, you had pretty good control over your experience. That was a long time ago at this point, but I wouldn’t say it was always a dumpster fire.

        • r3df0x ✡️✝☪️@7.62x54r.ru
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          9 months ago

          Facebook way back in the day was the shit. Everything was super private outside of groups which served as the public square. I haven’t found any federated platforms that come close. It might be seven or eight years now since I logged in.

          • LilaOrchidee@feddit.de
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            9 months ago

            Isn’t diaspora like that? They have a somewhat facebook-like interface and rely on ‘aspects’ to define how public or private something is. It is listed on the fediverse map, though it doesn’t use activitypub but a different protocol.

            • r3df0x ✡️✝☪️@7.62x54r.ru
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              9 months ago

              You can manually set things to be private, but I don’t know if there’s any way to set everything as private by default.

              It has the problem with all Facebook alternatives where they feel like Twitter without post limits.

  • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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    9 months ago

    Honestly, ANY platform that obscures links through redirection should be considered unsafe. If you can’t verify the target URL before you click the link, then you are asking trouble. Twitter and similar platforms do this so they can track you more effectively. (In the past it also served the purpose of shortening links to SMS-friendly lengths, but that ship sailed like 10 years ago.)

    Not that visibility automatically would make it safe, but it is the bare minimum required as a starting point.

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      9 months ago

      Closer to 15 years ago. Skype and WhatsApp (before the FB nonsense) were viable options to SMS as long as your friends were also using the same app.

      Although, the viability also depended on the price you had to pay for the data. If it’s like 1.5 €/MB, sending snail mail suddenly seems like a very appealing alternative. Some time around 2003-2005 there was still one company that actually charged that much while all the competitors were switching to monthly packages or even unlimited plans. The price range was absolutely wild back then.

      • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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        9 months ago

        That’s true. I was referring specifically to Twitter’s SMS integration. I forget exactly when they increased the tweet size limit beyond what could be sent via SMS, but it was a long time ago. At first, SMS was a big part of Twitter’s success. People used Twitter on flip phones with no browser or apps. It was basically an SMS broadcast service.

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    9 months ago

    I mean, clicking links in any kind of comment/forum type place on the internet can be dicey, even if it is exactly what it says it is.

    If you disagree, and the political standstill created by career politicians puts a sour taste in your mouth, visit www.lemonparty.org to find out more about how you can make a difference.

    • Holyginz@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I refuse to call Twitter X. It sounds like what an edgy teen would call a website and I also refuse to go along with anything an ass clown like elon wants.

    • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Nope, but this is musk hate…not common sense.

      You can replace X/Twitter with any platform that has users posting links and it doesn’t change. Discord? Steam? Sms? Signal? Facebook? Forums? Reddit?

      • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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        9 months ago

        there’s a difference if the platform in question replaces every link with their own tracking link lengthener which only later redirects where it should. at least twitter and yt does this, preventing you from seeing real destination. some places don’t

        • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          So… basically every platform and anyone who is has 1/2 a brain cell to rub together and hide a link?

  • dynamojoe@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I need a firefox plugin that blocks Twitter. Not tweets from blue checkmarks, the whole damn site.

    • AtmaJnana@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I have Nitter Redirect installed, but Nitter stopped working. So it just blackholes all X links. Some day I’ll add them to my pihole, I guess.

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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      9 months ago

      PrivacyBadger blocks embedded tweets, so since you’re probably not going to visit the website itself, it should do the trick.

      • Agrivar@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Plus, it has the added benefit of drawing attention to how many “articles” on other sites are just a long string of embedded tweets.

    • 4am@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      PiHole can block any domain you want. AdGuardHome has a handy switch in the UI that does it for you.

  • gian @lemmy.grys.it
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    9 months ago

    Damn, a security researcher discovered what was known from late 1990’s/early 2000’s: a link on a webpage could take you in a place that it is not the one the link say it will be.

    • wagoner@infosec.pub
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      9 months ago

      I get the knee-jerk jaded cynicism but this is a little more nuanced than that.

      “All they have to do is set up two different URL destinations in their post. In the case outlined above, clicking the forbes.com link actually takes you to joinchannelnow.net. Once on this site, the server checks to see whether the request is coming from a typical browser (that’s you). If so, it’ll take you to the spam site, which for this situation is a crypto scam Telegram channel. However, if the server detects the request is coming from something else—like a X link-verifying bot—it’ll assume the request is not being made by a human; in these cases it returns a legitimate URL. So, even though the first link is to joinchannelnow, X checks it and is taken to forbes.com, and so it places that URL preview on the post. You’re experience will be different.”

  • Mastengwe@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Do bots need links to click? Wait…. Are actual people still visiting that shithole?