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by stallmanite 2099 days ago
This is my strategy as well. If I want something I initiate a search. Incoming sales attempts do not exist in my universe.
3 comments

If you want to see where Google search results really point to, you can right click it and then hover over it to get the real destination... it's been like this for 15+ years (google changes the destination on-click).
Thanks, I'll be sure to explain this to all my friends and family, right after I teach them what onclick, "real destination", "hover", etc. mean.
I think that it is pretty screwed up that browsers allow this "feature"...
Just checked; and while they did indeed use to change the URL (on mousedown (!) - which was infuriating, because right-clicking to copy URLs produced a mess I'd then have to pass to data:text/plain,... in a new tab to extract the URL-encoded... agh), they currently really do just leave the link alone now.

They just fire off a request to google.com/url?... to track the click before letting you on your merry way.

Sigh

That used to be my strategy until a salesman knocked on my door offering heavily discounted ceiling insulation, which is something I had half-heartedly always wanted but never got round to buying. He said my address was one chosen by the government to give a subsidy to but funds were limited so it was first come first served or risk missing out. Sounded suspicious so I checked with the government who confirmed everything the salesman said was true. I got a 2nd quote from another installer but the door-knocker was cheaper so I bought his. I wouldn't have known the subsidy was available without him and would have missed out on a genuine rare high-value giveaway.
Same with phone calls or mail. Look them up on the web and go through their web site for numbers/email addresses
Great point. When the IRS phone call scam first came around it scared the crap out of me for a second but a quick search revealed the truth.