Links can be deceiving

Just because it looks like a URL does not mean that it is telling you where the link will take you. The text that is presented and the underlying URL are two separate things.

An email arrived that shows the following text.

http://info-mgmt.com/dmradio
http://twitter.com/briefing_room

However, if you have your browser status bar enabled, you can see that these will not take you to the info-mgmt.com or the twitter.com domains. At least, not directly.

The reason is that the URL specified for this text link will take you first to the icptrack.com domain to be counted. The email sender probably uses this to measure the effectiveness of their email advertising or it is perhaps how someone makes more points to get paid.

Here are the presented links and the underlying URL to which they will take the user.

http://info-mgmt.com/dmradio

http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=23525607&msgid=310849&act=HLZZ&c=247241&destination=http%3A%2F%2Finfo-mgmt.com%2Fdmradio

===

http://twitter.com/briefing_room

http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=23525607&msgid=310849&act=HLZZ&c=247241&destination=http%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fbriefing_room

Ok, so call me old-fashioned, but I do not particularly like this. The advertiser probably knows that if the presented text informs the user that the link will take them to, or through, the icptrack.com domain, that it will probably not be used.

To avoid this reluctance, the text presented makes the user think the link will take them directly to the info-mgmt.com and twitter.com domains. This causes the user to think they know what is happening, when the truth is that they are just believing what they perceive.

This is in the direction of, if not all the way toward, deception.

I am not trying to stop the advertiser from generating metrics about their work. I just want them to tell me what they are doing with the information they are gathering about me. This is not enough for me to make an informed decision about whether or not I should click on the link.

Am I over-the-edge on this one? Should I just click and move on?