Know your Domains and URLs

One of the great inventions that made the Internet so accessible to the masses is the domain names and URLs, if addresses to where we needed to go stayed at their basic form of numbers I don't believe we would be using it as broadly as we do. URLs gave meaning to the links we use and made them easier to remember. I doubt anyone knows the real IP address of amazon.com, but we all know how to get there by using the domain name.

Since URLs are used by everyone on the Internet to take them to the desired location, it is important to know how to identify real and safe domains and how to identify fake domains that may pretend to be real and maybe used for phishing information.

An interesting article I found from the Information Technology Services department at Yale University, refers to this subject and stresses the importance of knowing where you click to ensure you are taken to the real amazon site for example and not some website that pretends to be amazon and will use the information you provide for identify theft and credit card frauds.

The article brings three good points that will help identify a fake URL :

• The end of the URL is what matters the most
• Accounts.amazon.com = Valid
• Amazon.accounts.com = Fake
• Beware of Internet IP addresses in URLs - criminals may use a raw IP address such as 122.334.2.18
• Fake URL maybe disguise in a email link or a web page link - always hover about the link and look at the status bar to see where it really takes you

Avinash Rana, an independent blogger that writes mostly about Internet and technology wrote a recent blog about the very same topic. In his post he says it is pretty easy for a talented web-developer to make it seems like you are in a real website, therefore we all must pay attention to where we enter in the virtual world, especially if we plan to disclose any personal information that may be used to harm us.