Disguised Link Deobfuscation

Mr E

Just wondering if there is any way to discourage these kinds of spammers:

Someone answer me here please! http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056726438
Thank you!

It looks like a boards link, but if you hover over it, you can see it goes somewhere else (I've linked it to Google as an example).

These guys can get to 20+ posts before they're noticed because they aren't as obvious or blatant as the "WaTcH Chelsea vs. Arsenal Live!!!!" crowd.... They've also hit the site 2-3 times per day for the last few days and won't go away until disguised links are neutered.

Boards.ie: Danny

It's very handy to just be able to tell people to go here and not have to type out the full URL. See my sig or even your sig for other examples of why having the ability to textualise URLs is a good thing.

So with that in mind how do you suggest we should cope with disguised links?

Danny

AlmightyCushion

Any way I think of that could solve this issue (or at least prevent or minimise it) is at least a million times more annoying than the problem it would be solving especially given how infrequently it happens.

Mr E

Boards.ie: Danny wrote:

It's very handy to just be able to tell people to go here and not have to type out the full URL. See my sig or even your sig for other examples of why having the ability to textualise URLs is a good thing.

The spammers' links and our sig links aren't the same thing. The spammers are displaying what looks like a boards link, but the link behind isn't. People are going to click it without checking because it looks like a boards link.

Our signatures have "click here" links. People will be more cautious about those because they will need to hover the mouse to investigate what the link is.

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

So with that in mind how do you suggest we should cope with disguised links?

If %1 != %2, then don't render link? Or changed displayed text to what is in the "url=" piece?

Sorry, I don't know what is programatically possible within your source...

Gordon

The only thing that might work would be - if the display text contains 'http://' and the url link doesn't match the display text - then display the url link. But it really doesn't happen that much tbh.

Boards.ie: Danny

Mr E wrote: »

Sorry, I don't know what is programatically possible within your source...

Anything is possible, but the basic solution of if "text to display" is not equal to "link source" then display "link source" isn't really a runner. It changes basic behaviour of anchor tags and as AlmightyCushion said it'd be more infuriating than the problem it's intended to solve.

Mr E

Ah no worries, Danny.... thanks for the feedback.

Boards.ie: Danny

Mr E wrote: »

Ah no worries, Danny.... thanks for the feedback.

No hassle at all, thanks for the suggestion and it's something to keep on the radar especially since spam like this seems to be on the rise on boards; it's just that on this occasion I can't think of a particularly nice way to get around it without changing pretty solid, well-known, never-expected-to-be-different forum behaviour. If you come up with any more ideas by all means bump the thread, as will I if I figure something nice out

Danny

Boards.ie: Paddy

Gordon wrote: »

The only thing that might work would be - if the display text contains 'http://' and the url link doesn't match the display text - then display the url link. But it really doesn't happen that much tbh.

This was essentially the same idea I had. We can use a URL regex rather than just checking for http://,

Allows legitimate uses, stops shenanigans. No more rick rolling though