What is title="BLOCKED:: ?

[dragon]

A co-worker and I noticed some links that had the word blocked followed by two colons on a website we were working on. After searching online we found many more sites that used 'title="BLOCKED::http' but haven't come across any explanation of what it's for. Can anyone here tell us what this is for or where it comes from?

[felgall]

That is an attempt to stop the destination address of the link from being displayed when someone moves their mouse over the link. If it works then the person can't tell of the link is taking them to the real site or a spoofed copy intended to steal information or money from them. Most modern browsers still display the destination address where this is used and so it only works with old insecure browsers.

[dragon]

Sounds like a reasonable explanation, but it does seem strange to me that a university would be using something like that. Thanks for the info.