How to check a suspicious link before opening?
You have probably come across links many times in emails and chats where you have been asked to open the desired links. Is it possible to check the suspicious link without clicking on it? There are various methods in this field, but below we present the simplest solutions to check a suspicious link.
Check the link personally
When in You will come across a link on your computer, just move the mouse over it and you can see the destination of the desired link on the left side of the lower part of the browser. In mobile phones and tablets, if you touch the link for a while, you can see its destination. You go to SafirSoft. But for example, if you click on the link www.digikala.com, you will go to the Google site. So don't trust just because you think the link in question is okay, and be sure to check the destination of the link. In general, if you see that the name of the link and the destination are not related, then you should consider the possibility that it is suspicious.
It should be said that most of the time link shortening services are used for fraud. There are many services in this field, and after the name of the service provider's site, a number of letters are placed randomly. For example, tinyurl.com/mhswfafx is an example of a link from these services. tinyurl is the name of the service provider, and mhswfafx is the letter that directs you to the desired link.
Generally, these types of services are used to shorten long links, and many of them have no problems. But in any case, you should not ignore the possibility of abusing these types of services.
Copy the link for review
If for any reason you are not sure about the security of the link, there are many online tools for checking links. But before using them, you need to copy the desired links. To copy the link, just right-click on it on the computer and then select Copy link Address or an option similar to this sentence. In mobile and tablet, you have to keep your finger on the link so that such a menu appears. and then put it in the online tools for this task. But many of these tools are not compatible with shortened links. So we need to fix this problem first.
Extracting the main link from the shortened link
To extract the original link from the link, there are useful tools, such as CheckShortURL.com and Unshorten.it are two of these tools. In both cases, it is enough to put the shortened link in the bar of the upper part of the user interface and then click on Expand or Unshorten It.
After providing the final link, these sites also provide sites for checking the link, which we will discuss in the next step.
Checking the security of the link
To check for sites that publish malware, we recommend using the URLVoid tool. In this site, you must first enter the desired link and then by checking the link and the main site, it will provide you with useful reports. For example, in the image below, you can see that the site in question has no security problems.
As We said that there are many sites in this field and in this article we discussed only a few of them. But in general, if an unknown person sends you a link, it is better not to click on the link at all. On the other hand, we should also mention the hacking of the accounts of friends and acquaintances, who may send suspicious links to others after this. Sometimes malware can infiltrate the phone or computer of your friends and acquaintances and through this, various links can be sent to others.
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Source: How To Geek