URL shortening services

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URL shortening services such as shorl have been around for quite a while. They are very useful on places like twitter, IM, chat, etc. However, there is also an inherent risk with them. Once a URL is shorlified, you will not be able to tell where it will lead you to until you click on it. I have not seen any abuse of them, but it seems like an interesting avenue to pursue. Set up a drive-by site and create a nice shorlified URL (or even a whole bunch of them).

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2 Comments

windexh8er said:

Ummmm, well what about the preview feature on TinyURL?

http://tinyurl.com/preview.php

Even if you don't create the initial link with "preview" you can set a cookie that will never allow you to go directly to a shortened URL. It seems like proper netiquette to only post shortened links that let you preview the URL first.

--windexh8er

Kees Author Profile Page said:

I was not aware of this option. Definitely an interesting feature, yet I cannot help but wonder how many people will not take the precaution of previewing before they click. Thanks for the pointer! I might have to switch to tinyurl for my URL-shortening needs ;)

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