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posted by Woods on Thursday May 01 2014, @07:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the now-all-those-URLs-I-memorized-are-worthless dept.

Yesterday, a Canary build of Google Chrome removed something kind of important from the browser: the URL. Basically, it only shows the domain and leaves the rest of the URL bar as a search field.

Allen Pike, a blogger who writes "about technology and crap like that" suggests burying the URL like this will probably have some usability and security benefits. From the article:

More recently, browsers started hiding the URL scheme. http:// was no more, as far as most users were concerned. In iOS 7, Mobile Safari went even further and hid everything about the URL except the domain. With the Chrome "origin chip" change, the URL will move out of the field entirely, to a tidy little button that many users will never even realize is clickable.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday May 02 2014, @02:23AM

    by Reziac (2489) on Friday May 02 2014, @02:23AM (#38721) Homepage

    I've seen many, many phishing attempts that go to a perfectly legit domain that's been compromised, often with some long path to where they've hidden their nasties. Personal webspace on various ISPs is commonly so used, so the root may be something as well-known as, say, verizon.com. And then there are the lookalike domains, which the average person won't notice isn't for real, if only because they're not expecting it. Seen some of those in phish emails, too.

    Once upon a time, when FTP hacking was all the rage, I was looking for some file, found a link on Google, went there... longest path in the known universe and just the IP number showing in the address bar. Curious, I hied myself to the root, and found I was on Halliburton's FTP server. Which had at least a dozen different filedumps in its back reaches. Anyway, point is just because it's a known domain doesn't make it immune. Server security is better today, but still not perfect.

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