In general only click on a link if you trust the domain. A URL usually looks like this: https://first.second.third/… And only the second and the thrid word between dots are important.
For example: https://suspicious.google.com/ is in general fine, since the second and third word is google.com . However, https://lemmy.legit-lemmy.world/ is unsafe, because the second and thrid word are legit-lemmy.world, but not lemmy.world.
There are ways to smuggle unsafe asset under legit URL, usually by uploading them on google drive, github etc. The good rule of thumb is to never run anything on your computer unless you are absolutely sure it comes from trusted source, like from official website.
Official download webpage tends to have very descriptive and short URL, like
If you see long random strings on the download webpage then it is likely unsafe, for example:
Definitely don’t click on links like this one: https://trustmethisisnotascam.com/
Recently it has become a problem that optical twins of legit URLs exist, where some letters have been replaced by alike letters (homoglyphs) from different alphabets, see e.g. the list in this link.
Edit: Edge and Vivaldi seem to replace those letters by Punycode automalically, where in Firefox
network.IDN_show_punycodeneeds to be enabled in theabout:config.
bleepingcomputer.comI’m pretty sure ff shows punycode automatically. I’ve never had to touch it at least and I get punycode.
Tbf, the article is from 2018. It possibly has changed in the meantime.
Dang. Is there an equivalent Firefox add-on that checks for this stuff?
No Homo Graphs was last updated in 2020.
URL unicode verifier was last updated in 2023 and only has 1 review.It’d be nice to find something more recent.
Ff shows punycode. The article is quite old.
I don’t even understand what it is, really; do you have an example of it in action?
Should transform to https://🌽.ws/ when you click it. The
xn—is the punycode prefix.Here’s how Punycode works:
Unicode characters are first converted into a series of code points, which are represented as a series of numbers. The code points are then converted into a series of ASCII characters, using a specific algorithm. The ASCII characters are then prepended with “xn–”, which is a special prefix that indicates that the following characters are encoded in Punycode.
For example, the Unicode character 快 (which means fast in Chinese) is represented as the code point “U+5FEB”. This code point is then converted into the ASCII characters “2s5v”, which is prepended with the “xn–” prefix to give us “xn–2s5v”. This can then be used as part of a domain name.
When the domain name is displayed to a user, the Punycode is converted back into Unicode characters, so that the user sees the original characters rather than the encoded version. This allows users to use and read domain names in their native scripts, even if their computer or device doesn’t support those scripts.
Huh. Well, I was watching the URL bar the entire time and it only moved directly from the emoji to the X tweet; I never saw your decoded URL, unless it simply happens that fast, or I’m misunderstanding your last paragraph and that’s what was supposed to happen.
Also, that’s one heck of a short link, haha.
Might be because it’s a redirect… or maybe Firefox shows emojis directly but not other punycode?
social
How can the configuration be done on the Android phone ?
Open it on your work computer like I do, to avoid problems with my personal device
this one trick IT hates
virustotal.com can help at least somewhat.
+ Norton Safe Web
Use a friends computer
Someone else already mentioned it, but virustotal can check if the url is malicious. It’s not 100% of course but more often than not it will catch a malicious url. It’s a quick and easy way to check on-the-fly.
You can check URLs and files at virustotal.com for free.
If you have Windows 10/11 Pro and your computer supports virtualization, you can enable the Windows Sandbox in Windows Features too. This creates a temporary virtual machine with the bare essentials and no antivirus built in for testing stuff like this to see what the worst case scenario is if you visited/accessed.
I work on my small Samsung Android phone. Is there any means of creating a sandbox here ?
I’m not familiar on that platform, unfortunately, as I’m on iPhone.
But I think you should still be able to use virustotal’s website on mobile to check websites and also files.
There may be a sandbox app available for Android, but I’m not aware of any particular ones to recommend.
Nice try. I’m not visiting virustotal.com.
If it’s a website use a website preview online service.
