Passing your mouse over a hyperlink in an email to find out what site it goes to is a smart thing to do. Do you know how to read a hyperlink? Cybercriminals know that many people check where a hyperlink goes to in an email. So they now create logical, legible hyperlinks to trick their victims.
Discover how to read a URL
It's simple if you know how to look
To find out what site a hyperlink goes to, it’s important to read the right part of the URL (in orange in our examples).
1 https://news.ing.be/bess/get?id=12494.-1:jgw8tn5u
This hyperlink is possibly not very clear. However, you can be sure of one thing; it will take you to ing.be.
2 https://homebank.login.ing.bank.be/bess/get?id=12494.-1
This hyperlink is legible and looks as if it will take you to the ING Home Bank login page. However, the site it will take you to is bank.be. This is not the ING Belgium site, so it's a fraudulent link.
Remember
The important part in a hyperlink is the part just before the first ‘/’ (without counting the https://). This is the site that the hyperlink will go to.