Cool browser feature why won't anybody implement it?

[Argo]

I think if a browser detected that the text for the link defers from the actual URL it should pop up a warning. So for example if somebody did:

a warning shoudl be displayed. That would put an end to all the scammers.

 

[Snapster]

Easy way out of that in code below. Whatever you'll think of, spammers will find another way. Whilst spamming is profitable, there will be spam. Besides your idea would probably cause loads of popup windows per page, hence an annoyance.

 

[kamper]

So you see a link in visible text and automatically trust that the underlying url is the same? You don't notice the different url in the status bar when you hover over the link and you don't notice the different url in the address bar after you click on it? If that's what it'll take to keep you safe from scammers maybe it's better this way so that Darwin can do his job.

Sorry, that was harsh. But really, is it all that a big deal?

 

[Argo]

Originally posted by: kamper
So you see a link in visible text and automatically trust that the underlying url is the same? You don't notice the different url in the status bar when you hover over the link and you don't notice the different url in the address bar after you click on it? If that's what it'll take to keep you safe from scammers maybe it's better this way so that Darwin can do his job.

Sorry, that was harsh. But really, is it all that a big deal?

For me it's not, I always check url before clicking. 50% of the population however doesn't and I thought that's a very easy feature to implement that would eliminate 30% of all scam. As for the image trick, that won't work in IE since hyperlinks highlight once you hover over them.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: Argo
As for the image trick, that won't work in IE since hyperlinks highlight once you hover over them.

You mean they change colour? That's only if the page designer didn't specify that regular links and hovering links should have the same colour. Besides which you can easily have an image change when you hover above it.

I guess the funny part is that this would be easy to do as a firefox extension but that would fail to reach that '50% of the population' that doesn't know any better.

I still contend that it wouldn't do any good. People that can't understand when they're not actually visiting paypal are not going to take kindly to a warning about different urls because the don't have a clue what it means.

 

[Snapster]

Originally posted by: Argo

As for the image trick, that won't work in IE since hyperlinks highlight once you hover over them.

It was a simplistic answer, yes I could have put mouse over/outs and status text changes in too. Something that was simple, readable and to the point is all that was needed. I was just highlighting the fact that there are ways around on a method relying on text displaying one thing and the link saying another.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Interesting idea.

As for the billions-of-popups problem - they could simply implement it as something that happens when you click on a link. It would only happen once you clicked on such a misleading link.

It would have to be somewhat smart -- if a link's address was www.foo.com and the link text just said foo.com, then that's probably not something to panic about. Also, what about links that are obviously fake, like this one http://foo? "foo" is obviously not trying to mislead the person. I suppose it could simply be one of those options that's turned on out of the box, but you can easily disable the first time it happens by clicking a little checkbox in the dialog.

Not too much you can do about the image trick. You'll never keep everyone from getting conned, but you can definitely take some measures to protect people more -- and you shouldn't dismiss those just because they don't work 100%. Even saving 1% of potential victims from getting screwed is a pretty nice accomplishment, when you're talking about real money being lost.

As for why they "won't" implement it, perhaps they haven't thought of it? Have you actually submitted a feature request to anyone, or looked into cases where they decided not to implement it? Believe it or not, software is made by people, and you can even get involved! :Q

 

[Argo]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
Interesting idea.

As for the billions-of-popups problem - they could simply implement it as something that happens when you click on a link. It would only happen once you clicked on such a misleading link.

It would have to be somewhat smart -- if a link's address was www.foo.com and the link text just said foo.com, then that's probably not something to panic about. Also, what about links that are obviously fake, like this one http://foo? "foo" is obviously not trying to mislead the person. I suppose it could simply be one of those options that's turned on out of the box, but you can easily disable the first time it happens by clicking a little checkbox in the dialog.

Not too much you can do about the image trick. You'll never keep everyone from getting conned, but you can definitely take some measures to protect people more -- and you shouldn't dismiss those just because they don't work 100%. Even saving 1% of potential victims from getting screwed is a pretty nice accomplishment, when you're talking about real money being lost.

As for why they "won't" implement it, perhaps they haven't thought of it? Have you actually submitted a feature request to anyone, or looked into cases where they decided not to implement it? Believe it or not, software is made by people, and you can even get involved! :Q

I'm a software developer myself. I'll look into submitting this to Microsoft tomorrow.

 

[hellman69]

What about trying to handle the onclick event for an anchor tag? If that function returns false, it doesn't even matter what the href attribute is set to.

Trevor