2 ms·

> If somebody can access given url just by guessing it — well, it it unprotected, so implicitly it is supposed to be accessed by anyone. No matter how long it i

by tetrep 10y ago

> If somebody can access given url just by guessing it — well, it it unprotected, so implicitly it is supposed to be accessed by anyone. No matter how long it is. Let's see what happens when we apply this logic to cryptography... If somebody can access you data just by guessing it's key — well, it it unprotected, so implicitly it is supposed to be accessed by anyone. No matter how long the key is.

krick 10y ago
Except you don't expose passwords to the third party (and bit.ly, email provider and stuff all are third parties), and if you do — it's your fault you've got fucked. And you can chose arbitrary length key or password, and do not get randomly generated 6/12 char password for you. And, uh, I almost forgot, passwords are supposed to protect some information, and urls are supposed to show somebody the road to where this information is stored. It's pretty much by definition, if you unwrap the abbreviature. That's why you have logins and passwords in the first place, not just longer logins: the first is supposed to be public (to be shared if need to be) and is used to access some resource, and the second is supposed to be kept private and is used to authenticate that access. And url shorteners are supposed to make urls short and nothing more. And in fact your comment and the fact that you think these things are comparable is exactly what is dangerous about the situation, and not the damn short urls themselves. It's like some guys forcing drillmakers to start making drills out of rubber, because some idiot tried to pick his teeth with turned-on drill and got killed. See how dangerous drills are! Well, yeah, they are pretty dangerous, but how about just not picking your teeth with the fucking drill, and not applying "toothpicking logic to drillmaking"? By the way, the guy with rubber drill still can kill himself with that — it's just less efficient for both drilling wood and killing idiots. Exactly like what it is with "longer shortened urls.

by tetrep 10y ago

krick 10y ago

Except you don't expose passwords to the third party (and bit.ly, email provider and stuff all are third parties), and if you do — it's your fault you've got fucked. And you can chose arbitrary length key or password, and do not get randomly generated 6/12 char password for you. And, uh, I almost forgot, passwords are supposed to protect some information, and urls are supposed to show somebody the road to where this information is stored. It's pretty much by definition, if you unwrap the abbreviature. That's why you have logins and passwords in the first place, not just longer logins: the first is supposed to be public (to be shared if need to be) and is used to access some resource, and the second is supposed to be kept private and is used to authenticate that access. And url shorteners are supposed to make urls short and nothing more. And in fact your comment and the fact that you think these things are comparable is exactly what is dangerous about the situation, and not the damn short urls themselves. It's like some guys forcing drillmakers to start making drills out of rubber, because some idiot tried to pick his teeth with turned-on drill and got killed. See how dangerous drills are! Well, yeah, they are pretty dangerous, but how about just not picking your teeth with the fucking drill, and not applying "toothpicking logic to drillmaking"? By the way, the guy with rubber drill still can kill himself with that — it's just less efficient for both drilling wood and killing idiots. Exactly like what it is with "longer shortened urls.