Decoding a website URL

It is easy to get caught out by phishing scams if you don't know how website addresses work. The URL of a web page has several components and understanding them is important to your security. It's easy to spot fake ones and to avoid phishing if you know how to decode them.

URLs like http://paypal.verification-processing.com/index.htm look complicated, but it isn't. Chop off the http:// because that is unimportant, at least to us reading the URL. (To a computer it actually specifies the communication protocol.)

This leaves paypal.verification-processing.com/index.htm. Now chop off everything after the first forward slash. That refers to a page or program on the website.

We are now left with paypal.verification-processing.com from the original URL. Now read from right to left. The item on the right in this case is .com, but it could be .org, .gov, or any one of a number of two or three letter country codes. Let's skip this for a minute.

What remains is paypal.verification-processing and the right-most item is the important bit. In this case it is verification-processing and that is the website we would visit if we typed in the original URL or clicked a link with the URL. So what looked like a PayPal website URL at first glance is actually a website called verification-processing. This is obviously not PayPal. It's a fake website that is designed to look like it and to steal your login details.

This recent news story tells of a new Twitter scam that steals your login username and password. The URL that you are sent to is http://videos.twitter.secure-logins01.com/ and it's an obvious fake. Strip out the unnecessary bits and you get the name of the site, secure-logins01, and it's clearly not Twitter, so don't enter your login details!

Going back to the .com that we skipped earlier, it's worth noting that not all companies register all possible URLs. For example, www.apple.com is the Apple website where you'll find Macs, but www.apple.co.uk is The Apple Agency, which is a completely different company that deals with artwork and illustrations. In theory it would be possible to create a look-alike website with a different top level domain name, such as www.paypal.ru so it pays to know what it should be - .com in this case.

One final point, it is easy to disguise URLs. Click http://www.google.com/ and you'll get Bing and not Google.