Bitcoin Forum

Now when a link leads to bitcointalk.org, it has a green hover color. For example:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=24.0
Meta (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=24.0)
"Legit bitcointalk.org link" (http://google.com)

(If you don't see it, you probably have a cached version of the CSS -- manually refresh this page (https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/style.css) or wait a few hours.)

This should make it easier to identify phishing, especially once your eyes get used to seeing it.

Credit for this idea goes to Cyrus.

Finally something being done about this, thank you theymos!

Nice idea, Cyrus.
You haven't been promising too much the other day.

Good work on this. Glad to see some progress on the forums. :)

Does this only apply to links in PMs/posts? When I hover on thread titles and other bitcointalk.org links that are not part of a post/PM, it will show as it has in the past. For example, when I am about to click on my watch list, or click on the "reply" button in a thread.

Right, just bbcode.

Don't forget about signatures, as those are in bbc aswell.

Would you consider expanding this to other bitcointalk.org links that are not a part of BBcode as well? I would think the majority of the bitcointalk.org links that the average user will click on will not be a part of bbcode and would be used to the link not changing color.

Or maybe any link that is not a bitcointalk.org link could change to red or some other color.

Doesn't seem to work on my mobile. Edit you have to hover for it to change?

Quickseller, what colour is your signature? That's showing up as all green for me. Not sure if it was always that way.

It is green with white letters that say "MoneyPot.com - Your trusted Bitcoin Gambling Wallet"

It looks like there is a black dark blue (#476C8E) underline when I hover over my signature.

Dark blue, isn't it?

---

Without hovering: http://snag.gy/eilFi.jpg

With hover: http://snag.gy/9WF7U.jpg

Example from the forum-intern (colored) link in my signature:

http://snag.gy/SSYae.jpg

(notice the green underline)

underline color: #476C8E; for the moneypot sig, so it hasn't changed.

Why would the update needs to work for the links in the signature ? I think theymos specifically said it will show green only for links that have "bitcointalk" keyword in it or all the legit url's that link to this forum.

Great Idea Cyrus!

Test link 1 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php)
Test link 2 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php)
Test link 3 (https://bitcointalk.org:443/index.php)
Test link 4 (https://bitcointalk.org.scam.site/index.php)

Edit: doesn't like port number (test link 3). Not that anyone should use it anyway.

Great idea.

great idea theymos
it will help users to identify fake links hidden behind text pretending to bitcointalk link

If its possible making it bold green will work good and easy to noticeable.

is this the reason of our signature campaign problem? I heard from some one telling signature not pay us because of this change?
is it true?

Looks good.

I always check if I am logged in whenever I click a link to "Bitcointalk.org". If I am not, it is a phishing site. With this addition help, it will be easier to detect phishing sites.

I can't believe your main concern here is your signature campaign.  :-\
The signatures were affected as they are bbcode. Nothing was changed in them besides the line you can see if your signature contains a link.

I agreed to shields suggestion that it should be bolded. I for one with a bit of eye problem, honestly I didn't boticed the difference until I leaned towards the screen and focus in the link and I saw that it was green. It would be best if it would be more noticeable as i'm sure it is not only me that has problems with eye problems.

It's a more than welcome change for certain people since they tend to click on anything without looking closely at the actual masked link by hovering their mouse over the link. With this change the difference is clearly visible, even for the worst noobs.

Ok. Just couldn't recall it being that colour before and looked a bit garish.


The bots for bitmixer and yobit don't seem to be working right so maybe this had something to do with it.


It's annoying and time consuming for me when people report PMs as phishing links and you have to quote the message and look closely to check so this feature is useful. It might even be worth adding a holding page that gives you a warning after you click on a link asking you to double check the url and be careful with what info you enter. In the past others have tried phishing with fake blockchain.info links. Newbs likely wont realise what the green means as well.

Good job guys!

You should send 1 pm for each user in case they will not read this post

Good job Cyrus and theymos.


It isn't needed because there are 800k+ users registered, i think users will notice it gradually.

A holding page for an external link sounds good, but it could get tiresome, especially if somebody is looking at the Press section.
If this indeed is implemented, there should be a way to disable it.

Thanks for implementing this theymos.

We've been talking about it for some time and am glad to see he found the time and the right aproach to implement it.

http://bitcointalk.org
www.bitcointalk.org

^this one doesn't seem to work. or did I miss something?

So far this don't work on Safari IPhone browser think I am not the only iPhone user who visits this forum. Although I like the idea and wish you the best making it work for all people.

Noobs don't notice things even when you put it infront of their nose. For example, there is a sticky thread in the meta section explaining how activity works and how many activity points you need to reach a certain memeber level. But still people create plenty of threads asking when they will reach full member, or how many activity they can gain, etc. That's why it is indeed a good idea to send out PM's to all users to let them know about this new change.

I don't think it'll ever work on mobile devices, since you can't really "hover over" a link on a mobile device as you can a normal computer. I guess theymos could always create a mobile stylesheet for the website, and make all Bitcointalk.org links appear green even if they haven't been highlighted, but considering that there isn't even a mobile version of the site I wouldn't expect that to happen.

A newbie clicking on a phishing link is not going to be all that much of a problem and newbies are generally not the target of phishing links. The reason for both of these is the fact that very limited damage can be done with a hacked newbie account because of their low implied trust status and the ability of more moderators to moderate what newbies post.

I think it's supposed to have the https://

It does work on mobile device. I'm only using mobile. Yes you can't hover but if you click the link it will turn green.

My concern isn't that their account get hacked since their accounts are indeed worthless at that stage. It's more that anything can be hidden within a masked link. If some one with bad intentions spread out these links and promise people fake stuff, then noobs are more likely to click on them without thinking, and then a virus can get installed on their machine as soon as they click on that link. And you know what happens after that.

When we begin solving captcha?  ;D

This is great .. security update. Might save some people from falling for phishing scams. How about having the page which says:

⚠ You're leaving the bitcointalk forum
OR
⚠ You Are Being Redirected to An External Site

that'll warn people right away??

I was wondering why all my links were turning green all of a sudden. I thought it was some extremely late April fools joke. Heh.

Although I do agree with Twister. There should be a warning page that is much more obvious than a green font color change.

I would disagree with twister's idea. Have you guys ever used a website that does that? It is extremely frustrating to try and open external links on websites like that if there's always a notice popping up in your face letting you know that you're leaving the website. I think the green link highlighting in place right now is a good warning method for people, plus it makes it much easier to open multiple links at a time compared to having a warning page. You'd have to manually click on each new link page to acknowledge you're leaving the site.

Making it optional and default for newbies wouldn't be too bad.

That would be a reasonable compromise, but if something like that was to be implemented I think I'd also like a setting in my profile to turn the setting off, and only go with the green link highlighting on hover.

I promise not ask how much that innovation cost in this post.  :P :P :P

Well, if you enter either of those links they will redirect you to the https version (at least that is what happens on my end). So why wasn't this been applied to these links as well?

Huh, neat! Hopefully it will cut down on the fake sites a bit. Does this apply to PMs as well?

Though there are a lot of other changes I'd like to see that are a bit more important, this is a good thing to see.  Good idea, good implementation.

Yes, as the PMs are also in BB code so the green hover color works there too. I have verified it myself.

@theymos, nice feature you applied to attack phishing links.

It doesn't work for the beta forum's link.

Link : https://beta.bitcointalk.org

It is not supposed to work for the beta. Bitcointalk != bitcointalk beta.

It would be normal to assume that it does. Just test it out.

The more I've started seeing this feature in use, the more I'm wondering if it is backwards...

This appears to be a warning system, correct?  I feel like it is warning you that the link you are clicking is good.  Maybe a better idea would be making the non bitcointalk.org links red?  This way when someone is heading off site they are warned, instead of it appearing normal.  It would also be a reminder to open a new tab, instead of leaving bitcointalk when I click a link.  :)

yes making all non bitcointalk external links red will make this feature more secure, normally this green hover text isn't noticed by many new users but making bitcointalk links green and all others red will easy to notice and help easily find phising links

if it is possible then make all external links red without hover

yes instead of hover direct color would be better but i dont know if user can change direct color or not with codes

Since the purpose was to highlight when a link to bitcointalk.org s safe, instead of making all non-bitcointalk.org links red, they could even try to guess which links are attempting to phish bitcointalk.org....
For example, any link with bitcointalk in its text which does not direct to bitcointalk.org would have red hover text maybe.

I understand that.  However, is that any better than looking at the mouseover url at the bottom of your browser or looking for a secure logo in your browser when you click through?  If you know what to check for, the feature really isn't there to protect you.  Since this is a non-standard feature, most users will not be looking for green highlighted text when clicking a link.  However, a link lighting up red would let them know there's something suspicious going on, which now that external links aren't popping up in new windows, could be the only warning a user gets.

Ya i was like WTF was it always green recently ?
I thought maybe it was an update to my GreaseMonkey color script i use globally on Firefox.
Anyway, yeah i like it.

Why not both red for offsite links and green for bitcointalk?  I realize this might upset some of the atheists - it may resemble Christmas too much... but it seems like it would draw attention to the fact that there are different types of links. Tooltip might be another option if its too colorful but just a thought... its a good implementation regardless.

Here's an example of a common scam attempt.  This one is from today.  A red hover would have made it much more obvious.

Ya i think the Red + green idea is good..

IDEA: Spoetnik Approved™

Nice! This should help fight against phishing attempts. Keepup the good work!

Is there any way to update this so that this feature extends to reference links in users' trust profiles?

This topic seems to be back in discussion so I thought it should probably be done on the appropriate thread.  :)

This thread is four years old.  Yes, we see you brought this up back then - nice job!

The discussion thread is here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5300919.0

Thanks!  It is a bit curious that this warning was left out of the system to seemingly focus on positivity, and then the next addition was trust flags that are purely negative.

I can see not wanting to label every outside link with a warning as that would seemingly be harmful to business here.  A better compromise to my previous idea would be to only make outside links red that are disguised using the url command.  That way users could post outside links without them being red so long as the link was displayed naturally.  If they try to disguise the link's true destination by using the url command, it would display as red, warning the user that the actual destination is not being displayed and needs to be checked.

Example:
Check out this cool new way to donate: Donate to Bitcointalk (https://www.wandera.com/signs-youve-been-phished/) (link would be red)
Check out this cool new way to donate: https://bitcointalk.org/donate.html (link is green)
Check out this cool website that I like: https://www.wandera.com/signs-youve-been-phished/ (link is normal)