security - 为什么 Gmail 中的链接会重定向？

Question

我注意到某些电子邮件服务(例如 gmail 或我学校的网络邮件)会重定向(或用于)电子邮件正文中的链接。因此，当我将“www.google.com”放入电子邮件正文中，并在 gmail 或其他内容中检查该电子邮件时，链接会显示类似“gmail.com/redirect?www.google.com”的内容。

这让我和我发邮件的人(比如我的 parent ，他们不熟悉计算机)感到非常困惑。无论如何，我总是点击该链接，但为什么要使用这项服务？ (我还担心我的信息可能被发送到某个地方...我有什么需要担心的吗？在重定向之前是否存储了某些内容？)

抱歉，如果这是毫无根据的偏执。我只是好奇为什么有些事情会这样运作。

Answer 1

维基百科有一篇关于 URL redirection 的好文章。摘自文章:

Logging outgoing links

The access logs of most web servers keep detailed information about where visitors came from and how they browsed the hosted site. They do not, however, log which links visitors left by. This is because the visitor's browser has no need to communicate with the original server when the visitor clicks on an outgoing link. This information can be captured in several ways. One way involves URL redirection. Instead of sending the visitor straight to the other site, links on the site can direct to a URL on the original website's domain that automatically redirects to the real target. This technique bears the downside of the delay caused by the additional request to the original website's server. As this added request will leave a trace in the server log, revealing exactly which link was followed, it can also be a privacy issue.1 The same technique is also used by some corporate websites to implement a statement that the subsequent content is at another site, and therefore not necessarily affiliated with the corporation. In such scenarios, displaying the warning causes an additional delay.

所以，是的，Google(以及 Facebook 和 Twitter 这样做是为了)正在记录您的服务将您带到哪里。出于多种原因，这很重要 - 它让他们知道他们的服务是如何使用的，显示数据趋势，允许链接货币化，等等。

就您的担忧而言，我个人的观点是，如果您上网，您就会被跟踪。每时每刻。如果您对此感到担忧，我建议您以不同的方式进行沟通。不过，在大多数情况下，我认为这是不值得担心的。