I've noticed a pattern in Forums in relation to the techniques used by scammers and off-site advertisers.
First off, what is Tinyurl?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinyurl
It's pretty obvious that every time we see in forums a small topic talking about stuff that is too good to be true like free gold, free XBox live points, etc... then followed by a tinyurl link, we go a bit paranoid and alert, since we cant read what we are clicking until we click in and it loads. Then, the first thing we immediately do (well most of us) ignore it and report the topic. But shouldn't we take measures and automatically prohibit the use of tinyurl in forums in order to prevent scamming and also allow us to easier identify the people responsible for spamming, scamming, etc?
Prohibiting tinyurl links in forums
I've seen in several imageboards (like 4chan, 7chan, etc) have auto-detection software than automatically finds certain text macros found in URL's (like the word tinyurl in a tinyurl link) and automatically deletes the thread, reports the person who posted and sometimes even gets an automatic perma b&.
Since Tinyurl is used as a tool for hackers to lure innocent people into clicking their links, should this URL shortening service be allowed in an environment like Gaia Online?
Please feel free to leave any opinions.
First off, what is Tinyurl?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinyurl
It's pretty obvious that every time we see in forums a small topic talking about stuff that is too good to be true like free gold, free XBox live points, etc... then followed by a tinyurl link, we go a bit paranoid and alert, since we cant read what we are clicking until we click in and it loads. Then, the first thing we immediately do (well most of us) ignore it and report the topic. But shouldn't we take measures and automatically prohibit the use of tinyurl in forums in order to prevent scamming and also allow us to easier identify the people responsible for spamming, scamming, etc?
Prohibiting tinyurl links in forums
I've seen in several imageboards (like 4chan, 7chan, etc) have auto-detection software than automatically finds certain text macros found in URL's (like the word tinyurl in a tinyurl link) and automatically deletes the thread, reports the person who posted and sometimes even gets an automatic perma b&.
Since Tinyurl is used as a tool for hackers to lure innocent people into clicking their links, should this URL shortening service be allowed in an environment like Gaia Online?
Please feel free to leave any opinions.
