Beware of Clicking on Shortened URLs

It seems like there’s always something new to beware of on the web. Although not new, spammers and others are using shortened URLs to their advantage.

About Shortened URLs
Shortened URLs can be created by using services such as TinyURL. They’re especially convenient for providing links to URLs that are exceptionally long. The service shortens a long URL, such as 100 characters, into something as short as 15 characters, making it fit on one line and short enough to  fit in messages, such as Twitter, that limit the amount of characters in a post.

The Problem
For example, if the URL points to Amazon.com, instead of being able to see that it really does point to a page on Amazon all you see is this.

http://tinyurl.com/n93tvz

The “http://amazon.com/” part of the URL is hidden and you don’t know if it really takes you to Amazon’s website.

A Solution?
TinyURL offers a preview option. Instead of taking you directly to the site the URL points to, the preview option takes you to TinyURL to view the original. Here’s the preview URL for the same page on Amazon.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/n93tvz

First it takes the surfer to TinyURL to view the original URL and provides a link to “proceed to this site.” It looks like a safer option but I imagine spammers will find a way to get around this.

Visit:
TinyURL.com
Information Week

Read More:
Information Week’s article Web Link Shrinkage Powers Spam Surge by Thomas Claburn .