USE CASE
Look at where a mail link really goes, before it opens
Before you open a link in a bill, a delivery notice or an account confirmation, put the words you can see beside the address they actually lead to. This is how that job goes with the Chrome extension Safe Mail Link Check.
Safe Mail Link Check does not judge whether a link is safe or dangerous. It holds the first click and shows the real URL and the formal points worth noticing. Whether to open it in the end is your call.
The words of a link and the place it leads to need not match
An email carries links that read “confirm your account”, “track your delivery”, “view your bill”.
The words you see can be a company name you know, or a URL you recognise, and the address behind them can still be set to something else entirely.
It can look like this:
The point of the check is to see that address before the link opens, rather than after.
Reading the URL yourself is harder than it sounds
Hovering over a link shows the address, but a long URL or an unfamiliar form of one is hard to judge at a glance.
These are the kinds of thing to look for:
- The words shown and the address they lead to are different
- It is a shortened URL
- An IP address is used instead of a domain
- The link is http://
- It contains an unfamiliar notation such as Punycode
Their presence does not make a link dangerous, and their absence does not make one safe. What the extension does is put the places worth looking at in front of you the moment you click.
The same job with Safe Mail Link Check
- 1
Click a link in your webmail. Gmail, Outlook on the web and Yahoo! Mail (Japan) work out of the box, and any other webmail site can be added in the settings.
- 2
The first navigation is held, once. The page behind the link has not opened yet.
- 3
On the confirmation, compare the link text, the destination and the URL. Where they apply, points such as a mismatch between the two, a shortened URL or an IP address are shown alongside.
- 4
Read it, then choose “Cancel” or “Allow this time”. Cancel simply closes it. Allow this time does not open the link either.
- 5
If you decide it is fine to open, click it yourself a second time. That second click opens the link as usual.
These are the three rows the confirmation lists.
The displayed text differs from the actual destination
On a page it does not cover it reads nothing and does nothing. What it reads is the URL and the display text of the link you clicked, and it asks nothing of any outside service.
What this looks like in practice
An email asking you to “confirm your account”
A service you use may be named in the message and still not be the domain the link leads to. Put the words and the destination side by side before it opens.
A delivery or billing notice arrives
The more urgent an email feels, the more likely the link is pressed as it is. See the destination once, then decide whether that page is really worth opening.
The link is a shortened URL
A shortened URL says nothing about where it ends up. That it is one is shown as a point to take into account.
The URL is in a form you rarely see
An IP address, HTTP, Punycode — where a form like that is used, the confirmation says so. Not as a verdict, but as something to weigh before opening it.
What Safe Mail Link Check does
- Holds the first click on a link in an email
- Puts the words shown beside the address they lead to
- Shows the full URL
- Points out formal details such as a mismatch between the two
- Works on Gmail, Outlook on the web and Yahoo! Mail (Japan)
- Lets you add any other webmail site
- Finishes the whole check inside the browser
What Safe Mail Link Check does not do
- Rule a link safe or dangerous
- Catch every phishing site
- Ask an outside reputation database about anything
- Block a link permanently
- Open the page by itself once “Allow this time” is pressed
- Keep a record of what you clicked or where you browsed
The aim is not to stop you opening links in email. It is to see where one goes before it opens, rather than think about it afterwards — one check, once.
The tool for this job
The formal points it detects, the webmail it covers, the permissions it asks for and the privacy details are all set out on the product page.
Safe Mail Link Check A Chrome extension that shows where a mail link actually goes, before it opens See what it does →