Brian, http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/greedy-bbc-blocks-external-links/1478/ > > "Greedy BBC Blocks External Links > In an outrageous act of selfishness and greed the BBC<http://news.bbc.co.uk/> > has > decided to stop giving real links to the websites featured in the "Related > Internet Links" section on the right hand side of each news story." >
I would not categorize this as evil behavior per se... it's to protect from phishing attacks. Though I would suggest BBC not allow open redirect altogether and instead generate a hash for the url and append it to the redirect to ensure that redirects are not open to potential adversaries. Google's solution is slightly more elegant and they take the hash key approach: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=9&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vaio.eu%2F&ei=pg8QSeKUDIqOwQHN29SuCw&usg=AFQjCNGEZF4TAMzxTywhVCfBZKTJcsE8Qw&sig2=z3E6_NauPvoc6RmJcuaDQA If you hack the above URL and replace vaio.eu with vaio.com you get a redirect page similar to BBC's (but no auto-redirect): http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=9&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vaio.com%2F&ei=pg8QSeKUDIqOwQHN29SuCw&usg=AFQjCNGEZF4TAMzxTywhVCfBZKTJcsE8Qw&sig2=z3E6_NauPvoc6RmJcuaDQA > I thought *I* went over the top with things like this. Is is any less evil > than wikipedia using rel="nofollow" on all its external links? > > Why is this evil or even over the top? Any open system should have rel="nofollow" to revent attacks to boost PR. If it did not, wikipedia would become an integral part of the marketing strategy right alongside DMOZ or something. -- Aleem B "It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves" -- Sir Edmund Hillary (1919 - 2008)
