And when I put a link in any of my posts, I leave it naked. You know where you are going when you click it.
I appreciate that idea; as someone who has learned a few tricks in markdown and suddenly think I'm the dog's bollocks, it is very tempting to figure out fun little teasers to be the link for an external resource. But by being naked, it is very transparent and if we're in this network, we like that. I plan to adopt your practice, can always just use a footnote to keep the flow of the piece while maintaining proper citations.
And even further protection with regard to logins, be familiar with the levels of security for the different keys so even if something is exposed, damage control is as high as possible.