#url-shorteners — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #url-shorteners, aggregated by home.social.
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@apenkop : sorry, ik was vanmorgen offline ivm een crematie (een vriendin op hoge leeftijd).
Zoals anderen al zeiden: je hebt geen idee waar jouw browser uitkomt (noch of dat morgen nog zo is), het is een privacy-inbreuk (de omleider weet wie wanneer op welke link drukt, met welke browser en kan cookies plaatsen) en als zo'n omleider ermee stopt is de link dood (tenzij de omleider door een kwaadwillende wordt overgenomen, mogelijk zijn de rapen dan helemaal gaar).
Een misselijkmakend verdienmodel en een #Datalek !
Dit geldt overigens ook voor zeer veel QR-codes. In de code in onderstaande foto zit de volgende URL (link):
https:⧸⧸qrfy.io/yQRaPOaxBk
(in bovenstaande "link" heb ik // door ⧸⧸ vervangen om te voorkomen dat Mastodon die link inkort tot "https://qrfy.io/yQRaPOaxBk" <= ik zou zo'n link zelf nooit voor de lol openen, hooguit vanuit mijn interesse in cybercrime).
Scannen = verboden
Grote kans op het
AUTODROP
-VIRUS!Inderdaad kan zelfs AutoDrop een virus (of andere malware c.q. phishing) niet uitsluiten.
URL-verkorters zijn als gedraaide verkeersborden waarbij jouw auto mogelijk een mijnenveld in wordt gestuurd.
#LinkVerkorters #URLshorteners #Privacy #Security #Beschikbaarheid #Virus #Malware #Klikvee #Kapitalisme #DataHandel
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@notwhatwethink : unfortunately, yes.
If I open https://virustotal.com, select "URL" and copy/paste
https:// flip.it/rIUQA6 (without the space I inserted)
in the resulting "Details" tab I see (after I've removed the privacy invasive junk starting with the question mark):https:// www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/data-for-health/202509/the-lithium-link-to-alzheimers
Above too I inserted a space to prevent *Mastodon* from shortening the link. Without the space, this is what you and I get to see:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/data-for-health/202509/the-lithium-link-to-alzheimers
Most Mastodon instances shorten the *visual* alternative of actual links, therefore using third-party URL shorteners is not neccessary.
There are multiple advantages of using direct links instead of commercial data-collecting detours.
One of them indeed is privacy. I'm not sure whether https://flip.it and https://flipboard.com are owned by the same company, but although your and my data IS their business, who and when clicks which link should be NONE of their business.
Please help improving internet privacy (+ security + reliability) by providing the actual link you end up on (instead of using URL shorteners operated by internet leeches).
More info in ALT under the image. Questions? Please ask!
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Depuis quelques temps je vois passer dans les timelines des liens externes en share[.]google. Ils sont créés par Discover, une fonctionnalité d'Android qui permet de partager les articles de presse qu'elle affiche dans son flux d'actualités personnalisé. Comme je ne l'utilise pas, il m'a fallu un moment pour piger… 😅
Les raccourcisseurs de liens sont inutiles sur Masto (chaque url compte pour 23 caractères). En plus, ils cachent l'adresse du lien, ce qui peut faciliter les attaques de type phishing. Et la pérennité de ce genre de services n'est pas garantie. Google vient justement d'annoncer l'abandon de goo[.]gl avant de changer d'avis en catastrophe le 1er août. Beaucoup d'autres, comme tr[.]im et su[.]pr, ont déjà disparu au fil des ans.
Si vous aimez Discover, vous ignorez peut-être que le raccourcissement automatique des liens peut être désactivé dans les préférences : « Sur votre téléphone ou tablette Android, ouvrez l'appli Google. En haut à droite, appuyez sur votre photo de profil ou initiale puis Paramètres puis Général. Désactivez l'option Raccourcir les liens vers les pages Web. »
Gérer vos préférences pour les pages Web dans l'appli Google : https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/7013866
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@waxy Google just cannot keep itself from killing its own products, can it? I'm honestly surprised that YouTube still exists, tbh.
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@eloquence
Having posts or other indexed/indexable content refer to URL shorteners is dangerous for referrals/archiving/…:#ArchiveTeam, the people behind e.g. the effort to archive US government websites in a hurry—before they were deleted/changed in an even greater hurry by the current administration, write about #URLShorteners:
"Such services are a ticking timebomb. If they go away, get hacked, or sell out, millions of links will be lost (see Wikipedia: Link Rot)."
https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/URLTeam -
#Bitly links, like other #URLshorteners, can potentially hide various dangers:
1. Phishing Attacks: Redirect to fake websites that attempt to steal personal information.
2. Malware Distribution: Lead to sites that download malicious software onto your device.
3. Scams and Fraud: Direct to pages designed to trick users into providing financial or personal data.
4. Drive-By Downloads: Automatically download harmful content without user knowledge.
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@cheeaun @tanghus @benjaoming the key here is to give a light smack to ppl using url extortionists. #urlshorteners
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Reading Time: 2 minutes
Next year [all goo.gl shortened links will be dead due to the planned obscolence of hyperlinks](https://9to5google.com/2024/07/18/googl-links/). Any website, blog, or social media site that used Goo.gl shortened links will find that their links are worthless from that point on.
## The SMS Era on Twitter
URL shorteners thrived for a while because Twitter had a 140 character limit. This limit was put in place to allow for all tweets to be sent as SMS. Quite quickly Twitter found that sending SMS was too expensive so they abandonned the idea but the shortened URL stuck around.
The goal of the URL shortener was to make it easy to share hyperlinks on twitter, without the link counting towards the character limit. For a while URL shorteners thrived but as I said, years ago, shortened URLs are a security risk. This is because the hyperlink could be to anything. As the hyperlink is shortened we don’t know where we’re going.
## Obsure URLs
The other drawback with shortened URLs, and this is key, is that we don’t have any idea of the site, or article, they’re pointing to. This means that in 2025, when Goo.gl links are removed, plenty of website hyperlinks will be dead links.
If I wrote a tweet, or a blog post, and I used a shortened URL then a decade from now, if someone was to follow that link they would get stranded, not knowing where I had linked, or where to look for it in places like the web archive.
It’s one thing for a content creator to remove content from a website, but when a URL is destroyed it becomes absurd. With the demise of Goo.gl links, and probably t.co shortened links an entire era of the web will be harder to make sense of.
## An Opportunity
In theory this is an opportunity for a WordPress plugin to be made, that expands goo.gl hyperlinks to their full URL ahead of the shutting off of the URL shortened resolves. The plugin wouldn’t have a long shelf life, but it would simplify the process of ensuring that the goo.gl switch off has minimal effects.
## And Finally
URL shorteners had a very short period during which they were useful. Twitter quickly made it so that URLs were shortened internally, so the need for URL shorteners declined. It’s because of that decline that Google wants to kill yet another project. I never liked URL shorteners so I’m happy to see them vanish but having said that, I think plenty of content will be difficult to find next year.
https://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/the-demise-of-shortened-google-links/
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@feistyduck : _WHY_ are you using an URL-shortening service on Mastodon - of all places on infosec.exchange?!?!
https:⁄⁄buff.ly⁄WTF
What _IS_ your expertise?
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@~$ 𝚆𝚘𝚛𝙼𝙿𝟹 :t_blink: You don't even need any URL shorteners in the Fediverse. At all.
On Mastodon, a URL is always 23 characters. Always. No exception. No matter how long it is.
Even if you use a URL shortener to reduce a URL to only 10 characters, Mastodon counts it as 23 characters.
And everywhere that isn't Mastodon, you've got thousands of characters where Mastodon only gives you 500.
#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #URLShortener #URLShorteners #FediTips -
Wikipedia-Link zu lang? So schnell kürzst Du URLs (Links) zu #Wikipedia und zu anderen @wikimediaDE-Projekten:
👉 https://w.wiki/42iQ statt 👉 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:URL-Kürzung
#urlshortener #URLshorteners #URLShortening #wikimedia -
CW: Unlike 𝕏, no dodgy URL shortener shenanigans here
𝕏 (the ad sales company with a sideline in social networking) has been up to no good again: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/15/twitter-x-links-delayed/
It was apparently delaying redirects from its t.co URL shortener when they were to sites that Musk (chief tw@) doesn’t like
Yet another reason to dislike URL shorteners (besides obscuring links, enabling tracking, and risking link rot)
Fortunately, for most if not all fediverse instances, there are no mandatory URL shorteners, and there’s no good reason for us to use them either
Tips:
1. If you’re sharing an already shortened link, whether it’s from t.co, you.tube, g.co, goo.gl or w.wiki, paste it into your browser’s address bar first and copy the link it turns into when you visit the site
2. Strip off any irrelevant tracking stuff (especially Google Analytics/UTM) from the end of URLs before sharing (if you know which bits are needed)
📷 Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP
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@maxplanckgesellschaft
✅ All links on Mastodon count as 23 characters, no matter how long they really areURLs can be as long as you want, they will never exceed 23 characters of your limit.
There is no need to use a link shortener!
#FediTips #MastoTips #LinkShortener #LinkShorteners #URLShortener #URLShorteners #CharacterLimits #Mastodon
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Hier kannst Du Deine URLs (Links) in #Wikipedia und anderen #Wikimedia-Projekten kürzen (lassen):
https://w.wiki/42iQ
(https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:URL-Kürzung)
#urlshortener #URLshorteners #URLShortening -
✅ All links on Mastodon count as 23 characters, no matter how long they really are
URLs can be as long as you want, they will never exceed 23 characters of your limit.
There is no need to use a link shortener!
#FediTips #MastoTips #LinkShortener #LinkShorteners #URLShortener #URLShorteners #CharacterLimits #Mastodon