Why Safe 2 Click?
Every now and then, a website comes along and takes the Internet by storm. First there was MySpace, then there was Facebook, now there is the latest social networking phenomenon – Twitter. Whenever a website such as these starts to generate large amounts of traffic, spammers flock to take advantage. What facilitates the way in which spammers exploit Twitter is URL shorteners.
The way it works is that spammers create profiles on Twitter and then post links to their websites. In their posts, they will either reply to other people's posts, include popular hash tags (usually from the current list of trending topics), or both. People see these posts and click on the links, thinking that they are relevant because they are included in posts that are seemingly related to either their own posts or a topic that they are reading about.
The reason people don't realise is because spammers use URL shorteners to mask their links. For example, if a spammer wanted people to click on www.spammyspam.com/spam.html they would simply shorten the URL using a popular URL shortener, such as bit.ly or tinyurl.com, thus creating a masked URL along the lines of bit.ly/abc123 or tinyurl.com/abc123. Users obviously don't know what the links contain until they click on them and the website loads. They could contain anything from phishing scams to pornography.
How is Safe2Click different?
What sets Safe 2 Click apart from other URL shorteners is the fact that users get to preview links before they visit them. When a user clicks on a URL shortened by Safe 2 Click, a preview page displays a thumbnail image of the website they are about to visit, along with the title and full web address of the page. The user can then see if the website is likely to be spam, pornography or anything else unexpected – and can choose not to follow the link if they don't want to.
Can people use Safe 2 Click to hide unsafe URLs that have already been hidden using other URL shortening websites?
No. If you shorten a URL using another URL shortening website, such as bit.ly or tinyurl.com, and then shorten the resulting URL using Safe 2 Click, Safe 2 Click will automatically unwrap the URL to retrieve the destination URL and then shorten that URL. The result is that the preview page will show the destination URL - not the hidden, shortened URL.
For example, if someone shortened www.spammyspam.com/spam.htm using bit.ly, their shortened URL might appear as bit.ly/abc. If they shortened this shortened URL with Safe 2 Click and you clicked on the shortened Safe 2 Click link, the preview page would show you information about www.spammyspam.com/spam.htm - not bit.ly/abc.
How is Safe 2 Click going to make a difference?
As more and more people start to use Safe 2 Click to shorten their URLs, people will grow used to seeing s2c.me links and knowing that they are safe. People will also come to know that Safe 2 Click can be used to preview already shortened URLs from other URL shortening websites. This means that people will run out of ways to hide unsafe links.
