The Security Mentor

"Hey, Mister, come into the alley with me!"

That would send you running in real life. Can you spot the equivalent on the web? Bad guys on the web try to trick you into clicking links that go to bad places. Phishing is only one example. If you were still running Microsoft Internet Explorer, malicious links could take you to pages full of popups and spyware installations.

So can you tell whether a link is safe to follow? Common sense helps. If it's in email from a deposed African dictator, I'd suggest not clicking it. Can you look at it and tell where it will go?

Scott Pinzon of Watchguard Security wrote a brief lesson in reading Web addresses. It's worth reading just to make yourself a little more street smart. His advice is for nontechnical people (you know, the kind with actual lives) so there are some tricks he doesn't cover. In other words don't get overconfident: if you're getting a bad feeling about a link but you don't see anything wrong with it, go with your gut feeling.