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   Mark T. Tomczak (mark@mastodon.fixermark.com)'s status on Saturday, 07-Oct-2023 18:05:02 JST Mark T. Tomczak

   in reply to

   @Joe_0237 That's not a tracking link; it's a redirect notice.

   As ridiculous as it may sound to non-normies, Google added a feature ages ago where they warn a user when a link is about to go outside Google Drive (or, in the case of a corporate acount, outside the corporate intranet as configured in Google Apps). That feature is implemented by salting links in a doc with redirect wrappers.

   Why? Because users can't tell the difference, so sending someone a legit document that looks like it links to an internal company page but actually links to a third party proved to be an attack vector. One that needed to be defended against.

   (Yes, hypothetically they can be harvesting the redirect visits for link-out-following information. But that's not the primary purpose or the reason these links exist. They exist to pop up this page so that users have a moment to realize that the link they just clicked on isn't going to login.corpsite.org, it's going to login.hackers-steal-yo-creds.com)