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It's Not Safe to Click Links on X
(lifehacker.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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Honestly, ANY platform that obscures links through redirection should be considered unsafe. If you can't verify the target URL before you click the link, then you are asking trouble. Twitter and similar platforms do this so they can track you more effectively. (In the past it also served the purpose of shortening links to SMS-friendly lengths, but that ship sailed like 10 years ago.)
Not that visibility automatically would make it safe, but it is the bare minimum required as a starting point.
Closer to 15 years ago. Skype and WhatsApp (before the FB nonsense) were viable options to SMS as long as your friends were also using the same app.
Although, the viability also depended on the price you had to pay for the data. If it’s like 1.5 €/MB, sending snail mail suddenly seems like a very appealing alternative. Some time around 2003-2005 there was still one company that actually charged that much while all the competitors were switching to monthly packages or even unlimited plans. The price range was absolutely wild back then.
That's true. I was referring specifically to Twitter's SMS integration. I forget exactly when they increased the tweet size limit beyond what could be sent via SMS, but it was a long time ago. At first, SMS was a big part of Twitter's success. People used Twitter on flip phones with no browser or apps. It was basically an SMS broadcast service.