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Tech Tip: Preview Shortened URLs and Avoid Security Threats

By

On December 23, 2010, 4:58 AM

Today's ubiquitous URL shorteners have seen a dramatic increase in popularity the last couple of years – much of it driven by the rise in popularity of Twitter itself. They are great for keeping character count at a minimum or to make sharing easier. Some even bring a few unique features to the table, like enabling statistics or the ability to select your own keyword, but as convenient as shorteners are they also introduce some issues.

There's significant variance from one service to another when it comes to uptime, for example, while on the other hand given that the process involves using an HTTP redirect there’s also the latency issue. But perhaps more importantly is the fact that they obscure the target address and thus may be used to trick users to an unexpected destination.


This means users are susceptible to something as innocent as being rickrolled to potentially much more harmful exposure, like being redirected to scamming websites or malware-ridden pages. Fortunately, there are several ways to peek behind a shortened URL to see exactly where the link will take you before clicking it, so let's take a quick look at a few of them.

Read our Tech Tip of the Week.

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4 comments

User Comments: 4

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  1. December 23, 2010 7:12 AM
    Guest said:

    Any recommended Chrome extension for this task?

    Reply
  2. December 23, 2010 7:21 AM
    Staff
    Julio Franco
    Julio Franco, TechSpot Editor, said:

    Just updated the tip with Chrome and Opera extensions that do the magic. Thank you for the feedback.

    Reply
  3. December 23, 2010 11:26 AM
    Guest said:

    How do IE users use the 'Long URL Please'? Dragging doesn't seem to work. Thanks in advance.

    Reply
  4. December 24, 2010 12:29 AM
    posermobile89 said:

    Guest said:

    How do IE users use the 'Long URL Please'? Dragging doesn't seem to work. Thanks in advance.

    I dont think you should be worried about whats on the other end of the link if you are using IE. Everything will destroy you...

    Reply

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