As such, it often gets used by phishers to piggy-back on the domain reputation of Google by either human actors safety-squinting the domain name or systems that allowlist Google.
Google has often had open redirect problems, for example around AMP, but these seemed to be unintentional and were removed after some time. However, this google.com/url naming scheme almost seems intentional.
This is in contradiction with their own advice (2009) around open redirects [2].
Does anyone know why Google keeps this working, thereby facilitating phishers?
[1] https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/scammers-using-new-trick-in-phishing-text-messages-google-redirects/
[2] https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2009/01/open-redirect-urls-is-your-site-being
jprezant•3w ago
throwaway89201•3w ago
It will probably filter the URL through Google Safe Browsing, but that doesn't help much for phishing as they mostly use new or reputable domains, and browsers check that list on default settings anyway.
blahlabs•3w ago
"The page you were on is trying to send you to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46613684.
If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous page."
BenjiWiebe•3w ago
Android, mobile Firefox.
andreareina•3w ago