Safe Browsing

In this article, we will discuss how we can ensure that the URL entered on users' profiles is safe to browse and why this is important to us. Lately, we've seen an uptick in cybercriminals pretending to be businesses or government agencies on social media in order to get sensitive information from unsuspecting victims. Spoofing and phishing have led to financial losses and reputation damage for businesses, including government sites. Additionally, illegal businesses use technology like short links or domain redirection to mine their victims online. There is a possibility that we will see these threat actors using Scard as a tool for their malicious activities, so we have to act fast on this.

To combat these malicious activities, we adopted four solutions in Scard;

1. We use Google Web Risk to verify the URL entered by the users. While we use Google Web Risk, visitors are protected by Google Safe Browsing on their devices to detect malicious links and sites.
2. While Google Web Risk verifies the URL, we are also scanning the URL on our end using our Global Blacklist. Some threat actors can be very clever in their use of technology, and some even pay for services to avoid detection by Google.
3. Although it is difficult to detect malicious activities when using short links, our system has a solution that allows the scanner to unshorten the link before it is published on the profile.
4. By having prefix links and allowing links, we can keep malicious actors from creating harmful links that could potentially harm anyone who clicks on them.

Although we cannot stop these malicious actors forever, we can lessen the damage they cause by taking preventative measures. We want to communicate clearly that such behaviour will not be tolerated.

Click here to learn more about out how Scard deals with impersonation.