Google's new link-shortening service comes with security concerns, like the rest
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Established link-shortening services like bit.ly and TinyURL are waiting to see the reaction from the tech world, now that search giant Google has launched its own link-shortening service, for use with microblogging sites like Twitter.
Twitter's 140-character-per-post limit makes posting longer URLs impractical, so link-shortening services have sprung up to break them down into bite-sized chunks. However, experts say that the renamed links can be a security problem, since they give no indication as to what content they lead to and the services themselves do not use robust web filtering.
The shortened links are also problematic because of their source. Their prevalence on social networking websites leads to them being considered a trusted source that potential victims wouldn't think twice about clicking on. Experts urge caution in clicking on shortened links that seem even a little suspicious.
PC World reports that some utilities are available to help make shortened links more transparent, enabling users to see the full-sized link contained within. These are available either as stand-alone applications like Tweetdeck or browser plug-ins like ExpandMyURL and LongURLPlease.
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