hxxp://, sometimes h**p:// or _ttp://, is used in URL

Uniform Resource Locator

In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....

s (web links) to obscure the fact that one is linking to a http://

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....

 website

Website

A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

. It is generally used to avoid automatic recognition by computer programs. For a user to follow this link, it is usually necessary to manually copy-paste the link onto the web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

's address bar and replace the 'x

X

X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Uses:In mathematics, x is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. The usage of x to represent an independent or unknown variable can be traced back to the Arabic word šay شيء = “thing,” used in Arabic...

'es with 't

T

T is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets...

's.

With Internet Explorer (including version 7

Internet Explorer 7

Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years...

), replacing the X's after pasting into the address bar is not necessary, as it will correct the URL automatically.

Uses

Some of the uses of this method include:

• to avoid passing the HTTP referrer header which would reveal the referring web site to the target.
• avoiding automated web crawler
  Web crawler
  A Web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, Web spiders, Web robots, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutters.This process is called Web...
  
  s from following the links. While effective, legitimate web crawlers can be avoided through the use of a robots exclusion standard
  Robots Exclusion Standard
  The Robot Exclusion Standard, also known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol or robots.txt protocol, is a convention to prevent cooperating web crawlers and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website which is otherwise publicly viewable. Robots are often used by search engines to...
  
   on the target web site. To avoid advancing the search engine rank of the target web site, nofollow
  Nofollow
  nofollow is a value that can be assigned to the rel attribute of an HTML a element to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index...
  
   attributes can be used instead.
• to bypass overzealous link spam protection in, for example, blog
  Blog
  A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
  
   comments.
• for making sure that a user doesn't accidentally click on a potentially harmful link, in applications that automatically recognize links in plain text
  Plain text
  In computing, plain text is the contents of an ordinary sequential file readable as textual material without much processing, usually opposed to formatted text....
  
  . Examples of this include "not safe for work" links.
• to avoid an application from downloading unwanted files, like advertisements or a malware
  Malware
  Malware, short for malicious software, consists of programming that is designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, or gain unauthorized access to system resources, or that otherwise exhibits abusive behavior...
  
  . The method is directly change all 'http' to 'hxxp' in specific uncompressed .exe or .swf files with a hex editor
  Hex editor
  A hex editor is a type of computer program that allows a user to manipulate the fundamental binary data that makes up computer files. Note that computer files can be very small to very large...
  
  .