Twitter just announced that it will start looking for malicious links in Direct Messages to help protect users from phishing and other deceitful attacks. Twitter will do this by routing all links to Twitter’s link shortner (twt.tl).
“By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.” according to the post.
Currently Twitter Trust and Safety team are focusing their efforts in Direct Message and email notifications since most attacks occur there. It is still unclear when the new URL shortner twt.tl will be used across Twitter messages.
From a marketer perspective, the new link routing service doesn’t seem to have any impact if you use any link tracking service. According to Danny Sullivan: “As a marketer, I don’t lose my own tracking. From an SEO perspective, no link juice is lost. And for users, as Twitter points out, it can effectively stop any abusive URLs dead since it never “broadcasts” the “real” URLs that can be harmful”
Tariq Ali is an avid follower of the search engine and Internet marketing industry for the past 10 years. When he is not working or playing with tech gadgets, you will find him swimming, biking or running.
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Tags: Scam, social networking, Twitter
