Naked Links!

Support the "Naked Links" movement!

Ever hear of Naked Links? No, don't try to Google it. I just did, and trust me, it's not what I'm talking about. You know what's the opposite of Naked Links: try Google or UIUC or eBay. Something like this, but worse. The infamous "Your eBay/PayPal account is going to close, Dear Sir/Madam, please click her to update some information and your account will be just fine" link. The less-infamous AIM profile "Click me and this weirdo will know who you are and when you clicked me" link.
The first is a potentially dangerous link. An unsuspecting idiot clicks the link, sees the familiar eBay/PayPal website, enters their password and a month later they're being hunted across three states for not paying their $50,000 credit card bill.
The second link is not as dangerous. At least, the victim won't be on the run from the law. This is a rather sore point with me, as I see this sort of link as an invasion of privacy. They used to be pretty popular a few years ago in AIM profiles. The owner puts this link in their profile. The victim clicks the link, are sent to some weird website before being instantly redirected to some MySpace site. But now the profile owner knows the screen name of the person who followed their link and when they did so. Sneaky. It's also not a very nice thing to do, considering most of the people that follow these links have very little idea of what's happening. My first way of fighting back was to flood the offender's system with about 90,000 users named "FU" until he finally took the link down. Now, I hope to educate. And flood them more if they don't learn.

The Naked Links movement aims to strip away the confusion. Give us a link and show exactly what's behind it. No more of this obfuscating crap. Sure, I always look at a strange link (read: non-search engine link) before I click on it, but most people don't. Scams are the most serious problems, but other annoyances exist. So I say strip! Take off that damn text.

There are alternatives, you know.
On my AIM profile I precede a link with a description in square braces, like this.

    [My new blog]
    http://power-to-the-fuzzy.blogspot.com/

Simple and to the point.

Another alternative has been sprouting up recently: Google search links.
This is when directions to a website or whatever say "Google this phrase and click the first result." This is one of my favorite ways to get a particular idea across. It serves multiple purposes:
1. IQ test: if a person can do a simple search, their IQ might be enough to see what I'm talking about. Seriously, too many people are stumped by simple things that can be Google'd in about 4 seconds. Learn to use that search button!
2. No complicated link to remember!
3. The website you're telling them is probably not the only one. Maybe you're telling a person how to make jello in the shape of cars. The phrase "nascar jello" returns a number of links pointing at Jello molds in the shape of various NASCAR cars. The person now has choices of which molds they might want to buy.
4. Pontiac is doing it! I saw a commercial that ended with "Type Pontiac into Google and see what's hot!" I mean, if a major car company is paying millions for this sort of advertisement, the method's probably not too bad.

Naked Links movement is not for everyone, of course. This is mostly for personal communication, whether in e-mails, chats, blogs of whatever. Make the wondrous interweb more friendly to the poor goobers who think hover is something a helicopter does.