External Links Detector

Detecting and Unhiding External Links. An indispensable tool for SPAM BUSTERS chasing malicious links hidden in comments and posts.

FIGHTING SPAM HIDDEN IN USER COMMENTS AND POSTS? The External Links Detector can help you. The extension inspects the visited webpage, and highlights all external links, including hidden ones. It reveals not only links over blank characters, dots, but also hyperlinks over white-on-white text, or links hiding with complex techniques using injected CSS code. ------ I M P O R T A N T ! ----- SITE-BASED functionality - the External Links Detector (ELD) will only work on websites that you explicitly enable. You can do that either once per session by clicking the icon of the extension (we recommend keeping it pinned on the nav bar of the browser, otherwise you have to navigate through Chrome's menu to Extensions, and selecting ELD there), or permanently (recommended!) - visit the concerned website, right-click the icon of the ELD extension, and in the context menu, select the feature "This can read and change site data", and click the option with the domain name. Please see the last screenshot for illustration. ------ I M P O R T A N T ! ----- The extension is customizable in several ways. When you click the icon of the extension, or when you select "Options" in its context menu, you can adjust the following parameters: IGNORE LIST - you can enter multiple domains that you want to exclude from the external links checking. Note: you do NOT need to add the domain name of the web page, where you want to use the tool! COUNTER POSITION - you can select one of the four page counters for displaying the external links counter box. AUTO-RUN (labeled "Detect Links Automatically") - when enabled (default setting), detected external links will be counted upon loading the web page, and the number of external links is shown in the selected corner of the page. No rectangle appears when no external links are detected. When the option Auto-Run is disabled, then you have to click the icon of the extension in order to detect the external link on the current page. We recommend pinning the icon to the navigation bar of your browser. AUTO-HIGHLIGHT (labeled "Highlight links automatically") - when checked, all detected external links are automatically made visible, and highlighted with white text in a red rectangle, as soon as the visited page is fully loaded. Mouse-over tooltip over the rectangle shows the target URL of the link. If you keep this option disabled, the links will be only counted, and you have to click on the rectangle with the number of external links in order to reveal and highlight the links. SUBDOMAINS - by default, only 2nd level domains (i.e. "google.com", "xyz.org", ...) are being matched for exclusions (both from the ignore list, as well as the domain of the visited page). So for example if you are inspecting a page on the domain "forums.abc.net", and the page contains links to diverse subdomains of abc.net (i.e. "support.abc.net"), then those links will not be included (neither counted, nor highlighted). If you enable this option for strict matching, links to non-matching subdomains will be considered external links too. For example a link to www.microsft.com will be considered an external link, even if the domain "microsoft.com" is on the ignore list, or when you are inspecting pages on the domains "microsoft.com" or "support.microsoft.com". ZERO-COUNTS - by default, the counter of external links will appear in the selected corner of the page only when at least one external link (not appearing on the ignore list) is detected. If you prefer seeing the counter even when no links are detected, enable the option "Show zero counts". LINK LIST - by hovering the mouse cursor over the link counter box, you can view the full list of all detected links on the page. It is helpful, when the links are spread over diverse parts of the page, that may not be easily accessible, or perhaps may remain hidden in their original location. PRIVACY POLICY: This extension does not collect any user data, and does not connect to any remote servers. The code is secure and reviewable by any interested party. FEEDBACK: Comments with bug reports, feature requests, critics, or just with kudos welcome. Donations are welcome too, and help motivating me to maintain and improve the extension: • https://paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=724KXVPMHE6DL • https://buymeacoffee.com/truxoft CREDITS: - External Link icon © by Fathema Khanom @ freepik.com - External-links Chrome extension by ua-cms.ru - initial inspiration - ChatGPT - valuable advices - seilogramp @ forums.garmin.com - motivation, testing