Tag: SHORTURLS

View Thru is a neat extension for Google Chrome that lets you instantly see what's hiding behind a shortened link. You simply hover over the link (say, http://is.gd/bJoc7) and get an instant tooltip showing you where it's leading. When I tested it, the tooltip really was instant -- I did not have to wait at all. I tested it both with TinyURL and is.gd, and it worked equally well on both. The ...

I'm a fan of just about anything which helps make the web a little safer for my friends, family, and customers. So I was excited to read that Twitter's favorite link shortening service, bit.ly, is working to check every URL they process for malicious code. With about 40,000,000 links in their database and a firmly-established position as the top short link provider on Twitter, this is great ...

URL shorteners, while convenient, are bad for the web. They hide the true destination that they are pointing to, giving bad guys yet another tool in their arsenal, while conditioning web users to blindly trust the links they are clicking on. Further, as the debacle with tr.im showed us, URL shortening services aren't necessarily permanent. It's no coincidence that the rise in popularity of URL ...