16 ms·

URL shorteners set ad tracking cookies

497 points by firloop 6y ago

baxtr 6y ago
Of course they do? How would erst make money otherwise?
- dejj 6y ago
  Consider "commoditizing the complement" (https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement) e.g. a news site making their content linkable through social media for ad revenue at the actual page.
  - zackmorris 6y ago
    Wow never heard of that, thanks! This is one of the thousand reasons that I don't think capitalism will be viable beyond 10-20 years from now. The endgame will be perfect monopoly - one global player in every niche of our daily existence. Slowly force-feeding us a diet of whatever is most profitable (whatever service encompasses the most dysfunction in exchange for money). Off the top of my head, a better system might be one that seeks to eliminate dysfunction instead of profiting from it. Web browsers could provide short links to all websites by using a hashing function instead of an encrypted refcount. They could remove as many identifying bits as possible (like cookies). I like the direction that Apple and others are going, preserving less user data and letting less spill between unrelated websites. The question of what all these advertisers will do once they're not allowed to track us is a big one. But my guess is that targeted advertising is not needed in the first place. They did just fine (arguably better) with demographics in the centuries before tech revealed our personal browsing histories.
    - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
      > This is one of the thousand reasons that I don't think capitalism will be viable beyond 10-20 years from now. Hmm. You posted this from your phone or computer that was created by capitalism, from an OS created by capitalism, using a browser created by capitalism, to a message board for an organization who literally specializes in capitalism. While the original incarnation of the internet wasn’t created by capitalism, military funding and the inherent authoritarianism is probably not the ideal direction to return to. Yet you think all of this only has 10-20 years left? Oddly, you express a preference for what Apple are doing instead, yet they are the single largest product of capitalism or any other economic system that the world has ever known, including Saudi Aramco. Capitalism just “cured” a pandemic faster than anyone thought possible. Now, it’s not without its issues, but all of the evidence seems to suggest that we maybe ought to think twice before abandoning it and probably killing hundreds of millions of people (again).
      - SpocksBrain 6y ago
        Ah yes, “you dislike Society yet you contribute to it in someway, I am so smart”. The classical Sciences and Arts were all founded and developed under “divinely ordained” Monarchies. I suppose that would’ve been a fantastic case for conserving that system for you? Have you thought that maybe all those material accomplishments made under capitalism have less to do with the system itself and more to do with the fact it’s the only one around? Pretty sure many of today’s tech is founded as much on innovation that came out of Soviet labs as anybody else’s. Also, incidentally, current day capitalism is at the beck and call of one of the last remaining communist countries. Just a curiosity.
        lawnchair_larry 6y ago
        > “you dislike Society yet you contribute to it in someway, I am so smart”. Not even close to what I said. I didn’t suggest that he contributes anything to society. > Have you thought that maybe all those material accomplishments made under capitalism have less to do with the system itself and more to do with the fact it’s the only one around? Pretty sure many of today’s tech is founded as much on innovation that came out of Soviet labs as anybody else’s. It’s (mostly) the only one around because the others all failed spectacularly every other time. Not only did states collapse, but about 100 million people died. It’s amazing that you’d use the Soviet union as an example, considering where they ended up. > Also, incidentally, current day capitalism is at the beck and call of one of the last remaining communist countries. Just a curiosity China is the least communist of the remaining communist countries. And do you happen to know what major change allowed their GDP to explode and make them soon-to-be the biggest economy in the world? Even ignoring that, do you really want to live somewhere like China? If you think poverty and working conditions are bad in the US, just you wait! Unless you meant one of the other examples, like Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam or Laos. I’m guessing not.
      - q3k 6y ago
        > You posted this from your phone or computer that was created by capitalism, from an OS created by capitalism, using a browser created by capitalism, to a message board for an organization who literally specializes in capitalism. ... that all base on centuries of research, science and technological development that happened before capitalism was even first proposed. Your point being?
codefined 6y ago
I currently host https://femto.pw/ https://femto.pw/ - A URL shortener I've kept up for ~4 years and intend to indefinitely. It doesn't do anything with regards to tracking cookies or other dark patterns. It just redirects you using a 302 redirect.
- Merman_Mike 6y ago
  FYI that your site is blocked by this list: https://gitlab.com/The_Quantum_Alpha/the-quantum-ad-list https://gitlab.com/The_Quantum_Alpha/the-quantum-ad-list HN post for that list here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25512273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25512273
  - miked85 6y ago
    That list is questionable at best. There are many claims the list author makes without any source code at all, though a lot of buzzwords. The reddit r/pihole moderator pulled the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/kh5dit/the_quantum_adlist/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/kh5dit/the_quantum_... . The thread was more entertaining before the list author deleted every downvoted comment they made.
    - Jap2-0 6y ago
      [0] is perhaps even more concerning - apparently it bears a striking resemblance to Steven Black's (slightly more reputable) list[1] [edit: plus a few hundred thousand other rules of questionable sourcing]. [0] https://gitlab.com/The_Quantum_Alpha/the-quantum-ad-list/-/issues/13 https://gitlab.com/The_Quantum_Alpha/the-quantum-ad-list/-/i... https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/issues/1487 https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/issues/1487 [1] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
    - Merman_Mike 6y ago
      I agree that it's questionable. I commented the same in the thread I linked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25513161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25513161 However, at least for Pi-Hole users, more is usually better, so I added the list to my Pi-Hole.
calmchaos 6y ago
Use Cookiebro webextension to get rid of such tracking cookies automatically. Problem solved. https://nodetics.com/cookiebro https://nodetics.com/cookiebro
madars 6y ago
Wow! https://preview.tinyurl.com/examplezoom https://preview.tinyurl.com/examplezoom really shows https://zoom.us/j/123456789 https://zoom.us/j/123456789 link whereas Chrome network inspector confirms the viglink.com redirect. uBlock origin blocks the latter via Dan Pollock’s hosts file and Peter Lowe’s Ad and tracking server list.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  As someone who uses a whitelist approach, I am curious whether people ever experience false positives or missing entries with these lists? I have little experince with those lists except for going through one of them once and being shocked at what was in there. The setup I use is customised for me, i.e., Rube Goldberg would be proud. I can view and manipulate all traffic from outside the application and outside the origin computer. I can strip cookies based on IP, domain or URL very easily. I also control DNS so only domains I approve would even return an IP address.
  - samb1729 6y ago
    What is the user interface for your setup like? It sounds attractive but possibly prohibitively frictious to be workable for me. I currently use a combination of uBlock Origin blacklisting, NoScript whitelisting, and Little Snitch alerting, if you need a baseline to compare. I've also run a Pihole instance in the past to loop my phone in, but that's not running as of today.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
      No GUI. I think what I have created is something like a cross between Pi-Hole, Burp and something yet to be named. But it's faster, more flexible, uses different software and is Java-free.
      - samb1729 6y ago
vitus 6y ago
Tinyurl actually has a preview feature, which you can enable by default. https://preview.tinyurl.com/examplezoom https://preview.tinyurl.com/examplezoom Curiously, this specific tracking behavior (both the redirect and the cookie) goes away when turning on previews. (Incidentally, my uBlock origin filters block the VigLink redirect as a tracker, by default, as a sibling commenter points out.)
pluc 6y ago
Wasn't the primary use of URL shorteners to compress a given URL in order to reduce the character count? Given today's Twitter, what are they still used for besides visual convenience? Do youtu.be, t.co, fb.me and dlvr.it next!
- indymike 6y ago
  Well, click tracking and click counting come to mind.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  My company uses them in its print assets like billboards, posters, and transit ads. I see them all the time in commercial text messages, like from things I've subscribed to, or delivery alerts so I can track the pizza guy.
  - Hnrobert42 6y ago
    Do they use QR codes in addition to the shortened URLs? I’ve always wondered why QR code’s haven’t caught on more. Especially for things where the objective to access information more convenient than fat-fingering.
    - opan 6y ago
      QR codes are everywhere! They're on a lot more foods and such than they used to be even 5 years ago. French's mustard has one, Barq's Root Beer cans have one. A lot of electronics I buy have a card in the box with a QR code to get to the company's site.
      - aembleton 6y ago
        It's a shame the Netflix app on smart TVs doesn't show one for login. Rather than awkwardly typing in my username and password through a remote control, I should be able to open the Netflix app on my phone and scan the qr code.
    - 6y ago
tomaszs 6y ago
I am not surprised. URL shorteners will try to monetize eventually. One way is to support ad networks, other is to show ads and videos before navigating to the target URL. I am 100% sure TOS allow it since the beginning. As far it seems to be a grim future, it is almost only way they can monetize. Otherwise they will close their businesses rendering millions of URLs broken, what I think is the future that is too easy to predict.
- bobdosherman 6y ago
  Could also cross-subsidize by being a sub-affiliate network as part of an affiliate network. Company earns percentage of affiliate commissions produced by in-network links, which subsidize the non-commissionable out-of-network links (and non-earning in-network links).
- donmcronald 6y ago
  > As far it seems to be a grim future, it is almost only way they can monetize. Bitly charges $30/month (basic) which seems like an outrageous amount of money to me for what it does. How much more monetization do they need?
m00x 6y ago
The title should be "TinyURL sets ad tracking cookies" as this is the only one proven to do in this article. There are tons of URL shorteners, and not all of them do this.
- firloop 6y ago
  bit.ly and t.co both do, and they're hugely popular. I just left the HTTP responses out of the post for brevity. From the post: >While neither redirect you to an advertising company like TinyURL, Twitter’s primary business model is advertising, and bit.ly’s privacy policy says they share data with third parties to “…provide advertising products and services…” Both services set long-lived tracking cookies: curl -v 'http://bit.ly/aFzVh0' ... < Location: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/08/hear_katy_perrys_milk_milk_lem.html < Set-Cookie: _bit=l03lLp-b899a3350a02095760-00P; Domain=bit.ly; Expires=Fri, 02 Jul 2021 21:47:25 GMT curl -v 'https://t.co/45cMiYOHQ8' ... < location: https://luke.cat/ < set-cookie: muc=6d0d0800-f738-4704-b292-f03b6e5a5f91; Max-Age=63072000; Expires=Tue, 03 Jan 2023 21:49:09 GMT; Domain=t.co; Secure; SameSite=None
6510 6y ago
I use to run into a sci usenet poster who usually provided 10-30 shortened links with his postings pointing at books, papers and previous postings (google groups). Arguing over a topic he one time explained he had a clear analytics picture of what references other posters did and didn't read, who [silently] participated in the discussions, how much people read before and after writing a response, etc.
- sfgweilr4f 6y ago
  I do this for teaching. But I don't use a public url shortener because I trust none of them. I have a shortener built into my teaching site.
ForHackernews 6y ago
How is this news in 2021? I remember going to talks by tech people at link-shortener companies (bit.ly, IIRC) in like 2012 where they were talking about all the fancy analytics and tracking they offered and why it was so great that you should route all your links through them to get more "insight" into visitors.
forrestthewoods 6y ago
I really wish web browsers would strip tracking code bullshit from URLs. When I copy/paste a link for friends I always manually edit that crap. On the other hand I do love websites like WireCutter which only exists because of referral codes.
- TimLeland 6y ago
  Yes wirecutter exist because of affiliate links but they do offer detailed reviews. I use/trust them often for purchases and amazon affiliates do not cost the user anything extra.
- aembleton 6y ago
  You can do this with an extension like https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls I found that it broke some sites though so I removed it.
methyl 6y ago
We use Cloudflare Workers as a very simple URL shortener [1]. It has very generous free tier (100k requests per day) so it's more than enough for a lot of use cases. [1] https://lucjan.medium.com/free-url-shortener-with-cloudflare-workers-125eaf87b1ec https://lucjan.medium.com/free-url-shortener-with-cloudflare...
- donmcronald 6y ago
  Cloudflare docs [1] recommend using an ‘AAAA’ record with the value ‘100::’ for the dummy DNS entry. 1. https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/learning/getting-started#optional-configure-for-deploying-to-a-registered-domain https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/learning/getting-s...
  - methyl 6y ago
    Thanks, edited the article.
polote 6y ago
Don't want to be mean, but just to inform you, guidelines says "Please don't delete and repost. Deletion is for things that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place." and I know you have posted and then deleted the same post yesterday. It is fine to repost if you didn't get notice no worries
- firloop 6y ago
  Sorry about that, noted.
axegon_ 6y ago
Not particularly surprising. I was building a url shortner some 12-13 years ago but eventually abandoned it. But this was exactly how I planned to monetize it.
- TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
  This headline might be the biggest "duh!" I've ever read on the site. In this day, and in this surveillance market economy, you must assume that you WILL be tracked wherever you CAN be tracked.
  - isatty 6y ago
    I understand the downvotes, given this is HN, but while this is "duh", lots of people don't actively think about it whenever they see a shortened link. Posts like this are okay now and again to remind people that they can and will be tracked wherever possible.
TimLeland 6y ago
This is really interesting. I suppose tiny url gets a kicked back from their ad network for this. I'm the creator of the URL shortener (T.LY) and a Link Unshortener tool. I spend most of my development time fighting bad actors. My goal is to have a legitimate competitor to bitly that people benefit from. We do not set any cookies on redirects but do use cookies for authentication for users. T.LY: https://t.ly/ https://t.ly/ Link Unshortener: https://linkunshorten.com/ https://linkunshorten.com/
- samb1729 6y ago
  It is a shame that T.LY displays only the footer without JavaScript enabled instead of degrading gracefully. Surely a plain HTML form that POSTs should suffice? I'm not sure how much work it would require for you to support this, but it would help cement your place as a good web actor if you're so inclined!
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    Can you instead use the meta refresh tag?
    - cphoover 6y ago
      Why use meta refresh tag over a http redirect: https://t.ly/home https://t.ly/home
    - TimLeland 6y ago
      Try curl https://t.ly/c55j https://t.ly/c55j The response is: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url='https://weatherextension.com/ https://weatherextension.com/'" />
    - Thorrez 6y ago
      samb1729 isn't talking about viewing shortened URLs. That works fine with javascript disabled. samb1729 is talking about viewing the the homepage of t.ly and creating shortened URLs. Side note, I think a 301/302/303/307/308 redirect is better than meta refresh (t.ly happens to use a 301 redirect + meta refresh).
appleflaxen 6y ago
His GDPR letter is quite well written, too https://ylukem.com/files/_viglink-gdpr-email.png https://ylukem.com/files/_viglink-gdpr-email.png
- 1f60c 6y ago
  I think they used this template: https://www.datarequests.org/blog/sample-letter-gdpr-access-request/ https://www.datarequests.org/blog/sample-letter-gdpr-access-...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jrochkind1 6y ago
They could of course be sharing the click "back channel" with the ad network without any visible redirect at all, and still capturing just as much data. I guess it couldn't actually set a cookie with the viglink.com domain though. Is that important enough to risk being "found out", or do they just not care that much about being found out, so went with the somewhat technically easier to implement but visible to end-user option?
bluedino 6y ago
Another reason I use a publicly curated HOSTS file (search GitHub hosts file for examples), even if it is a little annoying that those links break.
reilly3000 6y ago
I honestly thought that was common knowledge. Like why else would you use a URL shortener, since Twitter started doing it on their own? I can do more to help web users understand trackers... perhaps I will work on that this year. I’ve worked in and around the space for too long to see outside of my bubble.
eznzt 6y ago
This post is a clear example of why the cookie law is an overreach. If you don't want websites setting cookies on your browser, why don't you configure your browser not to save cookies?
nnx 6y ago
Does this kind of cookie work anymore at all with browsers who use restrictive rules for third party cookies? (like Safari)
floatingatoll 6y ago
Are these cookies being caught and blocked/discarded/etc by Safari Intelligent Tracking Protection on macOS Big Sur and iOS 14?
arsonaut 6y ago
cookie dropping is more common than people realize. I've created a free service with no ads and completely free that also generates qrcodes (https://qrli.to https://qrli.to) The problem with url shortners is usually the abuse they get (from affiliate tracking above to MLM or CPL for dating sites). However the entry barrier is so low and they are still a relevant part of the infrastructure, not surprised bitly and tinyurl are monetizing this way.
everdrive 6y ago
Why do url shorteners even exist? They literally add no benefit whatsoever.
- mattwad 6y ago
  not everything supports HTML, like calendar invites and SMS messages, and some of these things have character limits.
- aembleton 6y ago
  Simpler qr codes that can be read by your phone at a greater distance or with more error correction. Text messages where going over a character limit adds to the cost
- freebuju 6y ago
  For ex. I can literally type the short url in a browser when using a different device. It's convenient uses cannot be understated.
- Can_Not 6y ago
  Malicious links can have warning pages instead of redirects, malicious url shorteners can change URLs after they were promoted.
musicale 6y ago
Isn't tracking the entire business model of URL shorteners?
dillondoyle 6y ago
Maybe cookie stuffing for incentive payments? e.g. why those coupon sites make a ton of money even though they have zero to do with purchase intent (someone searching for a coupon is already in their cart about to buy).
npunt 6y ago
Everything that sits between you and your destination is a middleman tracking you, unless proven otherwise.
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  (Astronaut looking at planet Earth) "Wait, it's all trackers?"
  - castratikron 6y ago
    (Stallman) "Always has been"
wolco2 6y ago
Not my personal url shortener.
davchana 6y ago
I had been using a personal URL shortener on & off since 2009. Bit.ly custom domain, goo.gl, yourls on a php server, bit.do, & many others. Even a static site Jekyll powered one at https://gitlab.com/davch/static-redirect https://gitlab.com/davch/static-redirect I could not use YOURLS because its too much maintenance demanding, like any other php script. Server vulnerabilities, versions, errors. Bitly custom domain because you can't customize the word after slash. Its still going to be random. Bit.do was/is fun, & good. Then I got introduced to Firebase, at that time recently acquired by Google. Dynamic Links, with myWord.page.link subdomain. I got few, 5 max subdomains were allowed initially. I made two projects, & total have 8 subdomains with page.link ending. Now they even allow custom domains, & it is even default option. I am using that not from about 2-3 years.
cccspr 6y ago
I noticed that share buttons like sharethis and addthis do it also. I bet if you look deep into their privacy policy (which no one does) it'll vaguely mention their data acquisition and "monetization" usage.
- freebuju 6y ago
  The worst kind. These ones will outright share (and profit from) your social profile data to advertisers.
start123 6y ago
TinyURL and a several free alternatives have been known to do it for a while now. But, not everybody does this to be clear. Running a free URL shortener costs time and money which is why they do it. For my URL shortening service https://blanq.io https://blanq.io, I am planning to remove this feature and only support custom domains. Free shortening is highly abused by spam and its a daily battle to be one step ahead of them. Last week, a single bad user created a phishing link and brought down the entire site for an hour until I was able to restore it. Lesson learned.
ornornor 6y ago
https://is.gd https://is.gd is the best url shortened I know of. Straight to the point, fast, light, no snooping or tracking.
- quyleanh 6y ago
  Thank you for sharing. This will be my default url shortener from now on. Simple, fast and customizable.
l1am0 6y ago
For exactly this problem I did build https://unshort.link https://unshort.link It is a service that unshortens the url and removes (if possible) the tracking parameters. It is GPL3, allows Easy Self Hosting and has an automatic browser plug-in
hooande 6y ago
If I recall correctly, Viglink does affiliate marketing. Essentially they are setting an affiliate cookie to make money from anything you purchase on Amazon, Walmart.com, Ebay, etc. This cookie will override any other that was already set. So if you clicked a link to a book from a blog post and then clicked on a tinyurl, they would get the affiliate referral money and not the blog. It's an easy way to make money because it doesn't involve a long sales process with major advertisers. Viglink does all that. tinyurl, bitly, et al are probably making a fair amount given their reach
- dannyw 6y ago
  Basically: 1. TinyURL does not give Zoom any more customers than they would have had otherwise. 2. Zoom pays VigLinks and TinyURL. 3. An incompetent, or unethical performance marketer gets to claim to their boss they are driving X upgrades for $Y when in reality they are driving 0 incremental upgrades for $Y.
sanmak 6y ago
I think these guys do this to pay for their servers, infra and salaries if any. One of the business model. I think we have ton of url shortener available in the market. Difficult to point one which is 100% safe and secure.
tsjq 6y ago
Pls pardon my ignorance. Is this not addressed by blocking all 3rd party cookies at the Browser ?
rkagerer 6y ago
I'm an avid tinyurl user. Anyone from that site want to explain their justification for this before I stop using your service? What's a good alternative (with the ability to tailor the shortened url)? I wouldn't mind paying a couple bucks a year.
- TimLeland 6y ago
  Take a look at https://t.ly/ https://t.ly/ as an alternative to tinyurl. You can update the url ending on the $5 a month plan. It’s a shorter domain with more options available.
okprod 6y ago
Is yourls.org an alternative? Requires some work though
lilyball 6y ago
Isn't this kind of redirection to set a cookie something explicitly blocked by Safari's Block Cross-Site Tracking feature? And I believe Firefox introduced a similar feature as well (not sure about Chrome). I feel like this kind of redirect thing was explicitly called out in the blog post announcing the very first version of this feature.
m2f2 6y ago
Delete your cookies regularly... here's how with Python and Firefox. Maximum privacy, no need for extensions. import sqlite3 import pprint def cnt(): rows=csr.execute("select count(*) as nr from moz_cookies").fetchall() return rows[0][0] db=sqlite3.connect(r'C:\Users\XXXXXX\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY\cookies.sqlite') csr=db.cursor() ckbefore=cnt() rows=csr.execute("select host,count(*) as nr from moz_cookies group by 1").fetchall() for r in rows: print("- %3d %s" % (int(r[1]),r[0]) ) csr.execute("delete from moz_cookies where host not in (" " 'your', 'own', 'list', 'of', " " 'sites', 'you', 'trust')") db.commit() ckafter=cnt() print("%d > %d cookies" % (ckbefore,ckafter) ); csr.close() db.close()
rxm 6y ago
Some URL shorteners provide a copy of their mappings to the Internet Archive as a promise that if they stop functioning for any reason the archive will continue to provide the mapping (and make the mapping file available). [0]: https://archive.org/details/301works-faq https://archive.org/details/301works-faq
LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago
Is it possible to get rid of tracking by disabling the third-party cookies in browser?
rsync 6y ago
Although "Oh By"[1] is not strictly a URL shortener it can be used as one quite nicely. When used as a URL shortener, there are no cookies, no tracking, and ublock origin shows a nice big zero throughout. This is because the revenue model of Oh By is selling custom/vanity codes - not monetizing user data or advertising. "If you're looking for a dead-simple URL shortener that respects your privacy and doesn't slow you down with ads or multi-megabyte interstitial pages, Oh By might be for you."[2] [1] https://0x.co https://0x.co [2] https://0x.co/faq.html https://0x.co/faq.html
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bobkrusty 6y ago
  . You have to type http:// http:// on the message field To make a redirect
  - rsync 6y ago
    Yes, correct. The typical use case is a human message, not a URL. If you want a redirect you need to explicitly prefix it like that…
Eriks 6y ago
Not all URL shorteners do that. I know because I own and maintain one that doesn't.
- stretchcat 6y ago
  Hopefully yours is only available on a company LAN or other private network. Public link shorteners are a linkrot disaster, particularly the myriad of shorteners being run by random dudes for shits and giggles, since those disappear as soon as they get bored. There is nothing more frustrating than having a dead shortened link for content that is likely still available if only you had the real URL, not the shortened garbage. Link shorteners are a form of pollution; you may as well pour used motor oil down a gutter.
  - qwerty456127 6y ago
    There are cases where URL shorteners are useful. E.g. some websites would parse a link you embed within a text you post and replace it with the actual video if that's a link to YouTube. A shortener may be the only way to post a classic hyperlink to a YouTube video there. Shortened URLs may also help when you need to put them on paper/merchandise or on TV or say them in a voice call. That's sad goo.gl has been discontinued - it was what you could rely on. IMHO archive.org should make their own.
  - Eriks 6y ago
    No, it's public and has been run for 11 years already and will continue to do so in foreseeable future. I would say it is the most popular one in my home country and it has good reputation among users. From my experience most linkrot issues comes from the fact that sites and documents URL shorteners link to go down before URL shorteners themselves. Many websites from 11 years ago doesn't exist anymore.
    - stretchcat 6y ago
      Will you die, will your heirs continue to operate this service? Or do consequences beyond your life not concern you? (e.g. "Why should I care about climate change, I'll be dead before it gets bad!") To mitigate the harm you've already caused, you should put the service into a read-only mode and contact Archive Team about handing off the database. You should do this today, before you get hit by a bus.
CarelessExpert 6y ago
Eh, for links to content on my website I just cooked up my own URL shortener using Apache rewrite maps and a little scripting to generate the short codes. Simple, private, and entirely under my control (which also means I don't have to worry about the links breaking).
- ourcat 6y ago
  I did that for a while with a short domain I used to own (urlb.at). Then ended up regretting it and shutting it down. I eventually decided that URL shorteners were a terrible idea for the web and that I wanted the 'actual' URLs out there.
  - CarelessExpert 6y ago
    > Then ended up regretting it and shutting it down. Care to elaborate?
    - loceng 6y ago
      I assume because it creates/introduces an arguably unnecessary point of potential future failure.
      - duskwuff 6y ago
        Also possibly because URL shorteners are frequently abused, e.g. to obfuscate links in spam. Operating one responsibly is a considerable amount of work.

497 points by firloop 6y ago

baxtr 6y ago

Of course they do? How would erst make money otherwise?

dejj 6y ago
Consider "commoditizing the complement" (https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement) e.g. a news site making their content linkable through social media for ad revenue at the actual page.
- zackmorris 6y ago
  Wow never heard of that, thanks! This is one of the thousand reasons that I don't think capitalism will be viable beyond 10-20 years from now. The endgame will be perfect monopoly - one global player in every niche of our daily existence. Slowly force-feeding us a diet of whatever is most profitable (whatever service encompasses the most dysfunction in exchange for money). Off the top of my head, a better system might be one that seeks to eliminate dysfunction instead of profiting from it. Web browsers could provide short links to all websites by using a hashing function instead of an encrypted refcount. They could remove as many identifying bits as possible (like cookies). I like the direction that Apple and others are going, preserving less user data and letting less spill between unrelated websites. The question of what all these advertisers will do once they're not allowed to track us is a big one. But my guess is that targeted advertising is not needed in the first place. They did just fine (arguably better) with demographics in the centuries before tech revealed our personal browsing histories.
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    > This is one of the thousand reasons that I don't think capitalism will be viable beyond 10-20 years from now. Hmm. You posted this from your phone or computer that was created by capitalism, from an OS created by capitalism, using a browser created by capitalism, to a message board for an organization who literally specializes in capitalism. While the original incarnation of the internet wasn’t created by capitalism, military funding and the inherent authoritarianism is probably not the ideal direction to return to. Yet you think all of this only has 10-20 years left? Oddly, you express a preference for what Apple are doing instead, yet they are the single largest product of capitalism or any other economic system that the world has ever known, including Saudi Aramco. Capitalism just “cured” a pandemic faster than anyone thought possible. Now, it’s not without its issues, but all of the evidence seems to suggest that we maybe ought to think twice before abandoning it and probably killing hundreds of millions of people (again).
    - SpocksBrain 6y ago
      Ah yes, “you dislike Society yet you contribute to it in someway, I am so smart”. The classical Sciences and Arts were all founded and developed under “divinely ordained” Monarchies. I suppose that would’ve been a fantastic case for conserving that system for you? Have you thought that maybe all those material accomplishments made under capitalism have less to do with the system itself and more to do with the fact it’s the only one around? Pretty sure many of today’s tech is founded as much on innovation that came out of Soviet labs as anybody else’s. Also, incidentally, current day capitalism is at the beck and call of one of the last remaining communist countries. Just a curiosity.
      - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
        > “you dislike Society yet you contribute to it in someway, I am so smart”. Not even close to what I said. I didn’t suggest that he contributes anything to society. > Have you thought that maybe all those material accomplishments made under capitalism have less to do with the system itself and more to do with the fact it’s the only one around? Pretty sure many of today’s tech is founded as much on innovation that came out of Soviet labs as anybody else’s. It’s (mostly) the only one around because the others all failed spectacularly every other time. Not only did states collapse, but about 100 million people died. It’s amazing that you’d use the Soviet union as an example, considering where they ended up. > Also, incidentally, current day capitalism is at the beck and call of one of the last remaining communist countries. Just a curiosity China is the least communist of the remaining communist countries. And do you happen to know what major change allowed their GDP to explode and make them soon-to-be the biggest economy in the world? Even ignoring that, do you really want to live somewhere like China? If you think poverty and working conditions are bad in the US, just you wait! Unless you meant one of the other examples, like Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam or Laos. I’m guessing not.
    - q3k 6y ago
      > You posted this from your phone or computer that was created by capitalism, from an OS created by capitalism, using a browser created by capitalism, to a message board for an organization who literally specializes in capitalism. ... that all base on centuries of research, science and technological development that happened before capitalism was even first proposed. Your point being?

codefined 6y ago

I currently host https://femto.pw/ https://femto.pw/ - A URL shortener I've kept up for ~4 years and intend to indefinitely. It doesn't do anything with regards to tracking cookies or other dark patterns. It just redirects you using a 302 redirect.

Merman_Mike 6y ago
FYI that your site is blocked by this list: https://gitlab.com/The_Quantum_Alpha/the-quantum-ad-list https://gitlab.com/The_Quantum_Alpha/the-quantum-ad-list HN post for that list here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25512273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25512273
- miked85 6y ago
  That list is questionable at best. There are many claims the list author makes without any source code at all, though a lot of buzzwords. The reddit r/pihole moderator pulled the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/kh5dit/the_quantum_adlist/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/kh5dit/the_quantum_... . The thread was more entertaining before the list author deleted every downvoted comment they made.
  - Jap2-0 6y ago
    [0] is perhaps even more concerning - apparently it bears a striking resemblance to Steven Black's (slightly more reputable) list[1] [edit: plus a few hundred thousand other rules of questionable sourcing]. [0] https://gitlab.com/The_Quantum_Alpha/the-quantum-ad-list/-/issues/13 https://gitlab.com/The_Quantum_Alpha/the-quantum-ad-list/-/i... https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/issues/1487 https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/issues/1487 [1] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
  - Merman_Mike 6y ago
    I agree that it's questionable. I commented the same in the thread I linked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25513161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25513161 However, at least for Pi-Hole users, more is usually better, so I added the list to my Pi-Hole.

calmchaos 6y ago

Use Cookiebro webextension to get rid of such tracking cookies automatically. Problem solved. https://nodetics.com/cookiebro https://nodetics.com/cookiebro

madars 6y ago

Wow! https://preview.tinyurl.com/examplezoom https://preview.tinyurl.com/examplezoom really shows https://zoom.us/j/123456789 https://zoom.us/j/123456789 link whereas Chrome network inspector confirms the viglink.com redirect. uBlock origin blocks the latter via Dan Pollock’s hosts file and Peter Lowe’s Ad and tracking server list.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
As someone who uses a whitelist approach, I am curious whether people ever experience false positives or missing entries with these lists? I have little experince with those lists except for going through one of them once and being shocked at what was in there. The setup I use is customised for me, i.e., Rube Goldberg would be proud. I can view and manipulate all traffic from outside the application and outside the origin computer. I can strip cookies based on IP, domain or URL very easily. I also control DNS so only domains I approve would even return an IP address.
- samb1729 6y ago
  What is the user interface for your setup like? It sounds attractive but possibly prohibitively frictious to be workable for me. I currently use a combination of uBlock Origin blacklisting, NoScript whitelisting, and Little Snitch alerting, if you need a baseline to compare. I've also run a Pihole instance in the past to loop my phone in, but that's not running as of today.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
    No GUI. I think what I have created is something like a cross between Pi-Hole, Burp and something yet to be named. But it's faster, more flexible, uses different software and is Java-free.
    - samb1729 6y ago

vitus 6y ago

Tinyurl actually has a preview feature, which you can enable by default. https://preview.tinyurl.com/examplezoom https://preview.tinyurl.com/examplezoom Curiously, this specific tracking behavior (both the redirect and the cookie) goes away when turning on previews. (Incidentally, my uBlock origin filters block the VigLink redirect as a tracker, by default, as a sibling commenter points out.)

pluc 6y ago

Wasn't the primary use of URL shorteners to compress a given URL in order to reduce the character count? Given today's Twitter, what are they still used for besides visual convenience? Do youtu.be, t.co, fb.me and dlvr.it next!

indymike 6y ago
Well, click tracking and click counting come to mind.
reaperducer 6y ago
My company uses them in its print assets like billboards, posters, and transit ads. I see them all the time in commercial text messages, like from things I've subscribed to, or delivery alerts so I can track the pizza guy.
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  Do they use QR codes in addition to the shortened URLs? I’ve always wondered why QR code’s haven’t caught on more. Especially for things where the objective to access information more convenient than fat-fingering.
  - opan 6y ago
    QR codes are everywhere! They're on a lot more foods and such than they used to be even 5 years ago. French's mustard has one, Barq's Root Beer cans have one. A lot of electronics I buy have a card in the box with a QR code to get to the company's site.
    - aembleton 6y ago
      It's a shame the Netflix app on smart TVs doesn't show one for login. Rather than awkwardly typing in my username and password through a remote control, I should be able to open the Netflix app on my phone and scan the qr code.
  - 6y ago

tomaszs 6y ago

I am not surprised. URL shorteners will try to monetize eventually. One way is to support ad networks, other is to show ads and videos before navigating to the target URL. I am 100% sure TOS allow it since the beginning. As far it seems to be a grim future, it is almost only way they can monetize. Otherwise they will close their businesses rendering millions of URLs broken, what I think is the future that is too easy to predict.

bobdosherman 6y ago
Could also cross-subsidize by being a sub-affiliate network as part of an affiliate network. Company earns percentage of affiliate commissions produced by in-network links, which subsidize the non-commissionable out-of-network links (and non-earning in-network links).
donmcronald 6y ago
> As far it seems to be a grim future, it is almost only way they can monetize. Bitly charges $30/month (basic) which seems like an outrageous amount of money to me for what it does. How much more monetization do they need?

m00x 6y ago

The title should be "TinyURL sets ad tracking cookies" as this is the only one proven to do in this article. There are tons of URL shorteners, and not all of them do this.

firloop 6y ago
bit.ly and t.co both do, and they're hugely popular. I just left the HTTP responses out of the post for brevity. From the post: >While neither redirect you to an advertising company like TinyURL, Twitter’s primary business model is advertising, and bit.ly’s privacy policy says they share data with third parties to “…provide advertising products and services…” Both services set long-lived tracking cookies: curl -v 'http://bit.ly/aFzVh0' ... < Location: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/08/hear_katy_perrys_milk_milk_lem.html < Set-Cookie: _bit=l03lLp-b899a3350a02095760-00P; Domain=bit.ly; Expires=Fri, 02 Jul 2021 21:47:25 GMT curl -v 'https://t.co/45cMiYOHQ8' ... < location: https://luke.cat/ < set-cookie: muc=6d0d0800-f738-4704-b292-f03b6e5a5f91; Max-Age=63072000; Expires=Tue, 03 Jan 2023 21:49:09 GMT; Domain=t.co; Secure; SameSite=None

6510 6y ago

I use to run into a sci usenet poster who usually provided 10-30 shortened links with his postings pointing at books, papers and previous postings (google groups). Arguing over a topic he one time explained he had a clear analytics picture of what references other posters did and didn't read, who [silently] participated in the discussions, how much people read before and after writing a response, etc.

sfgweilr4f 6y ago
I do this for teaching. But I don't use a public url shortener because I trust none of them. I have a shortener built into my teaching site.

ForHackernews 6y ago

How is this news in 2021? I remember going to talks by tech people at link-shortener companies (bit.ly, IIRC) in like 2012 where they were talking about all the fancy analytics and tracking they offered and why it was so great that you should route all your links through them to get more "insight" into visitors.

forrestthewoods 6y ago

I really wish web browsers would strip tracking code bullshit from URLs. When I copy/paste a link for friends I always manually edit that crap. On the other hand I do love websites like WireCutter which only exists because of referral codes.

TimLeland 6y ago
Yes wirecutter exist because of affiliate links but they do offer detailed reviews. I use/trust them often for purchases and amazon affiliates do not cost the user anything extra.
aembleton 6y ago
You can do this with an extension like https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls I found that it broke some sites though so I removed it.

methyl 6y ago

We use Cloudflare Workers as a very simple URL shortener [1]. It has very generous free tier (100k requests per day) so it's more than enough for a lot of use cases. [1] https://lucjan.medium.com/free-url-shortener-with-cloudflare-workers-125eaf87b1ec https://lucjan.medium.com/free-url-shortener-with-cloudflare...

donmcronald 6y ago
Cloudflare docs [1] recommend using an ‘AAAA’ record with the value ‘100::’ for the dummy DNS entry. 1. https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/learning/getting-started#optional-configure-for-deploying-to-a-registered-domain https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/learning/getting-s...
- methyl 6y ago
  Thanks, edited the article.

polote 6y ago

Don't want to be mean, but just to inform you, guidelines says "Please don't delete and repost. Deletion is for things that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place." and I know you have posted and then deleted the same post yesterday. It is fine to repost if you didn't get notice no worries

firloop 6y ago
Sorry about that, noted.

axegon_ 6y ago

Not particularly surprising. I was building a url shortner some 12-13 years ago but eventually abandoned it. But this was exactly how I planned to monetize it.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
This headline might be the biggest "duh!" I've ever read on the site. In this day, and in this surveillance market economy, you must assume that you WILL be tracked wherever you CAN be tracked.
- isatty 6y ago
  I understand the downvotes, given this is HN, but while this is "duh", lots of people don't actively think about it whenever they see a shortened link. Posts like this are okay now and again to remind people that they can and will be tracked wherever possible.

TimLeland 6y ago

This is really interesting. I suppose tiny url gets a kicked back from their ad network for this. I'm the creator of the URL shortener (T.LY) and a Link Unshortener tool. I spend most of my development time fighting bad actors. My goal is to have a legitimate competitor to bitly that people benefit from. We do not set any cookies on redirects but do use cookies for authentication for users. T.LY: https://t.ly/ https://t.ly/ Link Unshortener: https://linkunshorten.com/ https://linkunshorten.com/

samb1729 6y ago
It is a shame that T.LY displays only the footer without JavaScript enabled instead of degrading gracefully. Surely a plain HTML form that POSTs should suffice? I'm not sure how much work it would require for you to support this, but it would help cement your place as a good web actor if you're so inclined!
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  Can you instead use the meta refresh tag?
  - cphoover 6y ago
    Why use meta refresh tag over a http redirect: https://t.ly/home https://t.ly/home
  - TimLeland 6y ago
    Try curl https://t.ly/c55j https://t.ly/c55j The response is: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url='https://weatherextension.com/ https://weatherextension.com/'" />
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    samb1729 isn't talking about viewing shortened URLs. That works fine with javascript disabled. samb1729 is talking about viewing the the homepage of t.ly and creating shortened URLs. Side note, I think a 301/302/303/307/308 redirect is better than meta refresh (t.ly happens to use a 301 redirect + meta refresh).

appleflaxen 6y ago

His GDPR letter is quite well written, too https://ylukem.com/files/_viglink-gdpr-email.png https://ylukem.com/files/_viglink-gdpr-email.png

1f60c 6y ago
I think they used this template: https://www.datarequests.org/blog/sample-letter-gdpr-access-request/ https://www.datarequests.org/blog/sample-letter-gdpr-access-...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jrochkind1 6y ago

They could of course be sharing the click "back channel" with the ad network without any visible redirect at all, and still capturing just as much data. I guess it couldn't actually set a cookie with the viglink.com domain though. Is that important enough to risk being "found out", or do they just not care that much about being found out, so went with the somewhat technically easier to implement but visible to end-user option?

bluedino 6y ago

Another reason I use a publicly curated HOSTS file (search GitHub hosts file for examples), even if it is a little annoying that those links break.

reilly3000 6y ago

I honestly thought that was common knowledge. Like why else would you use a URL shortener, since Twitter started doing it on their own? I can do more to help web users understand trackers... perhaps I will work on that this year. I’ve worked in and around the space for too long to see outside of my bubble.

eznzt 6y ago

This post is a clear example of why the cookie law is an overreach. If you don't want websites setting cookies on your browser, why don't you configure your browser not to save cookies?

nnx 6y ago

Does this kind of cookie work anymore at all with browsers who use restrictive rules for third party cookies? (like Safari)

floatingatoll 6y ago

Are these cookies being caught and blocked/discarded/etc by Safari Intelligent Tracking Protection on macOS Big Sur and iOS 14?

arsonaut 6y ago

cookie dropping is more common than people realize. I've created a free service with no ads and completely free that also generates qrcodes (https://qrli.to https://qrli.to) The problem with url shortners is usually the abuse they get (from affiliate tracking above to MLM or CPL for dating sites). However the entry barrier is so low and they are still a relevant part of the infrastructure, not surprised bitly and tinyurl are monetizing this way.

everdrive 6y ago

Why do url shorteners even exist? They literally add no benefit whatsoever.

mattwad 6y ago
not everything supports HTML, like calendar invites and SMS messages, and some of these things have character limits.
aembleton 6y ago
Simpler qr codes that can be read by your phone at a greater distance or with more error correction. Text messages where going over a character limit adds to the cost
freebuju 6y ago
For ex. I can literally type the short url in a browser when using a different device. It's convenient uses cannot be understated.
Can_Not 6y ago
Malicious links can have warning pages instead of redirects, malicious url shorteners can change URLs after they were promoted.

musicale 6y ago

Isn't tracking the entire business model of URL shorteners?

dillondoyle 6y ago

Maybe cookie stuffing for incentive payments? e.g. why those coupon sites make a ton of money even though they have zero to do with purchase intent (someone searching for a coupon is already in their cart about to buy).

npunt 6y ago

Everything that sits between you and your destination is a middleman tracking you, unless proven otherwise.

HenryKissinger 6y ago
(Astronaut looking at planet Earth) "Wait, it's all trackers?"
- castratikron 6y ago
  (Stallman) "Always has been"

wolco2 6y ago

Not my personal url shortener.

davchana 6y ago

I had been using a personal URL shortener on & off since 2009. Bit.ly custom domain, goo.gl, yourls on a php server, bit.do, & many others. Even a static site Jekyll powered one at https://gitlab.com/davch/static-redirect https://gitlab.com/davch/static-redirect I could not use YOURLS because its too much maintenance demanding, like any other php script. Server vulnerabilities, versions, errors. Bitly custom domain because you can't customize the word after slash. Its still going to be random. Bit.do was/is fun, & good. Then I got introduced to Firebase, at that time recently acquired by Google. Dynamic Links, with myWord.page.link subdomain. I got few, 5 max subdomains were allowed initially. I made two projects, & total have 8 subdomains with page.link ending. Now they even allow custom domains, & it is even default option. I am using that not from about 2-3 years.

cccspr 6y ago

I noticed that share buttons like sharethis and addthis do it also. I bet if you look deep into their privacy policy (which no one does) it'll vaguely mention their data acquisition and "monetization" usage.

freebuju 6y ago
The worst kind. These ones will outright share (and profit from) your social profile data to advertisers.

start123 6y ago

TinyURL and a several free alternatives have been known to do it for a while now. But, not everybody does this to be clear. Running a free URL shortener costs time and money which is why they do it. For my URL shortening service https://blanq.io https://blanq.io, I am planning to remove this feature and only support custom domains. Free shortening is highly abused by spam and its a daily battle to be one step ahead of them. Last week, a single bad user created a phishing link and brought down the entire site for an hour until I was able to restore it. Lesson learned.

ornornor 6y ago

https://is.gd https://is.gd is the best url shortened I know of. Straight to the point, fast, light, no snooping or tracking.

quyleanh 6y ago
Thank you for sharing. This will be my default url shortener from now on. Simple, fast and customizable.

l1am0 6y ago

For exactly this problem I did build https://unshort.link https://unshort.link It is a service that unshortens the url and removes (if possible) the tracking parameters. It is GPL3, allows Easy Self Hosting and has an automatic browser plug-in

hooande 6y ago

If I recall correctly, Viglink does affiliate marketing. Essentially they are setting an affiliate cookie to make money from anything you purchase on Amazon, Walmart.com, Ebay, etc. This cookie will override any other that was already set. So if you clicked a link to a book from a blog post and then clicked on a tinyurl, they would get the affiliate referral money and not the blog. It's an easy way to make money because it doesn't involve a long sales process with major advertisers. Viglink does all that. tinyurl, bitly, et al are probably making a fair amount given their reach

dannyw 6y ago
Basically: 1. TinyURL does not give Zoom any more customers than they would have had otherwise. 2. Zoom pays VigLinks and TinyURL. 3. An incompetent, or unethical performance marketer gets to claim to their boss they are driving X upgrades for $Y when in reality they are driving 0 incremental upgrades for $Y.

sanmak 6y ago

I think these guys do this to pay for their servers, infra and salaries if any. One of the business model. I think we have ton of url shortener available in the market. Difficult to point one which is 100% safe and secure.

tsjq 6y ago

Pls pardon my ignorance. Is this not addressed by blocking all 3rd party cookies at the Browser ?

rkagerer 6y ago

I'm an avid tinyurl user. Anyone from that site want to explain their justification for this before I stop using your service? What's a good alternative (with the ability to tailor the shortened url)? I wouldn't mind paying a couple bucks a year.

TimLeland 6y ago
Take a look at https://t.ly/ https://t.ly/ as an alternative to tinyurl. You can update the url ending on the $5 a month plan. It’s a shorter domain with more options available.

okprod 6y ago

Is yourls.org an alternative? Requires some work though

lilyball 6y ago

Isn't this kind of redirection to set a cookie something explicitly blocked by Safari's Block Cross-Site Tracking feature? And I believe Firefox introduced a similar feature as well (not sure about Chrome). I feel like this kind of redirect thing was explicitly called out in the blog post announcing the very first version of this feature.

m2f2 6y ago

Delete your cookies regularly... here's how with Python and Firefox. Maximum privacy, no need for extensions. import sqlite3 import pprint def cnt(): rows=csr.execute("select count(*) as nr from moz_cookies").fetchall() return rows[0][0] db=sqlite3.connect(r'C:\Users\XXXXXX\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY\cookies.sqlite') csr=db.cursor() ckbefore=cnt() rows=csr.execute("select host,count(*) as nr from moz_cookies group by 1").fetchall() for r in rows: print("- %3d %s" % (int(r[1]),r[0]) ) csr.execute("delete from moz_cookies where host not in (" " 'your', 'own', 'list', 'of', " " 'sites', 'you', 'trust')") db.commit() ckafter=cnt() print("%d > %d cookies" % (ckbefore,ckafter) ); csr.close() db.close()

rxm 6y ago

Some URL shorteners provide a copy of their mappings to the Internet Archive as a promise that if they stop functioning for any reason the archive will continue to provide the mapping (and make the mapping file available). [0]: https://archive.org/details/301works-faq https://archive.org/details/301works-faq

LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago

Is it possible to get rid of tracking by disabling the third-party cookies in browser?

rsync 6y ago

Although "Oh By"[1] is not strictly a URL shortener it can be used as one quite nicely. When used as a URL shortener, there are no cookies, no tracking, and ublock origin shows a nice big zero throughout. This is because the revenue model of Oh By is selling custom/vanity codes - not monetizing user data or advertising. "If you're looking for a dead-simple URL shortener that respects your privacy and doesn't slow you down with ads or multi-megabyte interstitial pages, Oh By might be for you."[2] [1] https://0x.co https://0x.co [2] https://0x.co/faq.html https://0x.co/faq.html

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bobkrusty 6y ago
. You have to type http:// http:// on the message field To make a redirect
- rsync 6y ago
  Yes, correct. The typical use case is a human message, not a URL. If you want a redirect you need to explicitly prefix it like that…

Eriks 6y ago

Not all URL shorteners do that. I know because I own and maintain one that doesn't.

stretchcat 6y ago
Hopefully yours is only available on a company LAN or other private network. Public link shorteners are a linkrot disaster, particularly the myriad of shorteners being run by random dudes for shits and giggles, since those disappear as soon as they get bored. There is nothing more frustrating than having a dead shortened link for content that is likely still available if only you had the real URL, not the shortened garbage. Link shorteners are a form of pollution; you may as well pour used motor oil down a gutter.
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  There are cases where URL shorteners are useful. E.g. some websites would parse a link you embed within a text you post and replace it with the actual video if that's a link to YouTube. A shortener may be the only way to post a classic hyperlink to a YouTube video there. Shortened URLs may also help when you need to put them on paper/merchandise or on TV or say them in a voice call. That's sad goo.gl has been discontinued - it was what you could rely on. IMHO archive.org should make their own.
- Eriks 6y ago
  No, it's public and has been run for 11 years already and will continue to do so in foreseeable future. I would say it is the most popular one in my home country and it has good reputation among users. From my experience most linkrot issues comes from the fact that sites and documents URL shorteners link to go down before URL shorteners themselves. Many websites from 11 years ago doesn't exist anymore.
  - stretchcat 6y ago
    Will you die, will your heirs continue to operate this service? Or do consequences beyond your life not concern you? (e.g. "Why should I care about climate change, I'll be dead before it gets bad!") To mitigate the harm you've already caused, you should put the service into a read-only mode and contact Archive Team about handing off the database. You should do this today, before you get hit by a bus.

CarelessExpert 6y ago

Eh, for links to content on my website I just cooked up my own URL shortener using Apache rewrite maps and a little scripting to generate the short codes. Simple, private, and entirely under my control (which also means I don't have to worry about the links breaking).

ourcat 6y ago
I did that for a while with a short domain I used to own (urlb.at). Then ended up regretting it and shutting it down. I eventually decided that URL shorteners were a terrible idea for the web and that I wanted the 'actual' URLs out there.
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  > Then ended up regretting it and shutting it down. Care to elaborate?
  - loceng 6y ago
    I assume because it creates/introduces an arguably unnecessary point of potential future failure.
    - duskwuff 6y ago
      Also possibly because URL shorteners are frequently abused, e.g. to obfuscate links in spam. Operating one responsibly is a considerable amount of work.