by Charles Miller

An unfortunate truth is that if you want to be safe on the internet today you have to start by being extremely suspicious of everything. With that in mind I was already alert to the potential dangers of clicking on a link in an email to go to a web site. I hovered my mouse over the link and right-clicked to bring up a context menu on which I then clicked on "Copy Link" so that I could then paste this into a document window to see the entire address.

The web site address started off with "https://api.taboola.com/" but then it went on and on for 2,074 more characters that looked something like: "notify-click?app-type-bidder&app-api-key=606-201-7-38-2-c01-b118c-e-0dc0f-2a-7eb0-050feae-&response.id=_-068-75-2f15-7eab65-b6-761-pw--c1e-30-e-dd-3-af-c0-bc-0aa-3cc-X…" I could go on, but you get the idea.

What the heck does all that mean? The first part, "https://api.taboola.com/" is easy enough to understand. Taboola is an advertising agency headquartered in New York City. It is the one that provides many of the advertisements that appear on Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News, AOL, and some other web sites. After that part of the address all the gibberish that follows is all but impossible to decode.

Advertisers employ various spying techniques to better understand your online habits so they can tailor their marketing strategies to influence your behavior. If you click on one of their links you are basically giving your consent for the advertiser to know your IP address that tells your location, referrer information that reveals the previous page you visited, to place cookies in your browser to track where you go next, technical information about your device such as its internet browser and Operating System, and possibly execute commands on your device.

In and of itself none of this is necessarily malicious, but some of the commands that could be executed simply by your clicking on a link in an email could potentially be used by cybercriminals to gain control over your device. One possible indication this is happening is if your device’s screen freezes or displays an error message after you have clicked on a link. It is possible your antivirus protection intervened to stop the execution of unsafe instructions.

Let me be clear in stating that I have no reason to believe Taboola is up to anything nefarious because it seems to be a reputable-enough company. I only site them here as an example of how site tracking works and what could be done by devious cybercrooks.

So now that you have learned about only a very few ways that cybercriminals might be able to compromise your computer, tablet, or smart phone you may be asking yourself what you can do. Fortunately, there is a very easy way to stop these problems in their tracks, a very simple and easy-to-understand preventative measure that works almost 100% and it is something any internet user can do without regard to their level of technical experience. What you can do to protect yourself is to never, never, never, never, never, ever click on links in emails! Clicking on links you receive in emails is not safe, and there is no way to make it safe; so just do not do it!

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Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant with decades of IT experience and a Texan with a lifetime love for Mexico. The opinions expressed are his own. He may be contacted at 415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.

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