SEO is a Security Issue…

SEO leads to verbosity, verbosity leads to redirection, and redirection leads to risk

The acronym URL is so common today that we may have forgotten that it stands for Uniform Resource Locator. There are other words – URI, IRI – which web geeks deploy to show that they are deeply technical and globally aware, but for me it’s the first letter, the first word which today is under-respected: Uniform.

“Uniform” implies standardisation, consistency and even constancy; when a resource provides a uniform means for people to access it then that means should be globally homogeneous, unchanging, and ideally brief. Consider the emergency phone number 999 – concise, well-known, but in the UK we also support European 112 and American 911 numbers in case a tourist is dialling. Lack of uniformity is a clear issue: there is cost to maintaining, supporting and advertising several numbers however it’s doubtful for instance that 999 would be revoked in favour of 112, lest lives are put at risk…

…at the Unscrewing Security blog