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Most of us are Reddit refugees, and probably clicking more random links than we ever did before on websites we've never seen before. This whole experience feels like the old internet, but also throws up insane red flags with a modern internet perspective. What are the cybersecurity weaknesses we should all be looking for, and what are the best practices?

Here's my reason for posting this. As I search for new communities across instances to follow, I sometimes end up clicking a link and I'm no longer logged in. In the corner, that could be a Sign In link or it could be phishing. It's likely due to me not understanding how to properly navigate this system, but there's nothing stopping someone from setting up a sight like this as far as I know.

Thoughts?

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[-] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 47 points 1 year ago

If you're navigating to another community on their instance, you won't be logged in. When you're seeing that, check the URL. If you're on lemmy.ml, you're still on your instance; if not, you've navigated to that instance.

There's multiple ways to structure links, some of which will take you to that community via your instance, some not.

Could it be phishing? Sure. But far more likely, you're just on another instance where you don't have an account (or at least an active login).

[-] Artemis@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago

Do you mind giving a short explainer of proper link formatting? I was struggling with this just a little bit ago

[-] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you link directly to the full URL (including the instance), you'll take anyone who clicks it to that instance, and they won't be logged in. This is usually not what you want. Example: https://pawb.social/c/tech - This link will take you to my instance.

If you remove the instance URL, and just leave /c/communityname@instance - for example, /c/tech@pawb.social - the link will still take you to the community, but you'll still be on your instance. This is usually desirable.

Basically, instance -> community = link to that instance. Community -> instance = link to the community in whatever instance the user clicks it in.

You can also use ! instead of /c/ - I think this might work better for Kbin users (since they use /m/ instead of /c/ - can't verify this). In that case, it'd be: !tech@pawb.social

[-] Artemis@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks for the explainer! Doing some testing cause your example didn’t hyperlink on Memmy

c/tech@pawb.social /c/tech@pawb.social !c/tech@pawb.social !tech@pawb.social test text /c/tech@pawb.social /c/Lemmy@lemmy.ml

Weird. Not sure when your example didn’t link, because it did in my comment ¯\(ツ)

Edit: I'm back on browser. Everything that hyperlinked works properly. It's a Memmy issue

[-] Artemis@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Okay I learned a few things, though they may be specific to Memmy.

  1. The /c/community@instance works, and opens the links in the app, rather than browser
  2. If you have text in front of your link, it doesn’t work. Might be a Memmy issue.
  3. I need to test, but ~~I think #2 is responsible for the Null errors I’ve been getting when text is hyperlinked.~~

Text testing #3 - confirmed, this returns the Null error.

Now without prior text

test - this also didn’t work

test! - using a link beginning with ! Also didn’t work. Hmm.

[-] Bruce@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I love the "show source" button which gives access to how the tests are made.

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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
124 points (97.0% liked)

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