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URL Shorteners are evil, here's one to prove it.
- CrazedGeek 17y agoPhishing has never been more fun! Anyway, here's my feeble attempt: http://mug.gd/96W http://mug.gd/96W
- timf 17y agospatial points?
- CrazedGeek 17y agoEh, I couldn't think of anything clever for points. (I did say feeble...)
- timf 17y agoah, I just thought the "uninteresting" part was the mug and spatial points was some HN greasemonkey feature you had...
- CrazedGeek 17y agoOh, there's a lot more I changed than that.
- mdemare 17y agoThis is why you should use images for titles: http://mug.gd/QSEu http://mug.gd/QSEu
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- metra 17y agoCan't you just look at the location bar and see that the url is still mug.gd? Or is this a joke and I missed it?
- slig 17y agoWe can, normal users probably still don't know that.
- tolmasky 17y agoI think the idea is that a lot of these url shorteners now also include their bars on top.
- olliesaunders 17y agoOh gawd, I really hate that.
- secos 17y agoexactly.
- lloydarmbrust 17y agoBoth Facebook and LinkedIn also do this with external links from their sites, but that makes sense coming from M$-esque companies. I guess this is a good point though, as twitter will automagically shorten URLs that you enter anyway.
- begemot 17y agoIsn't it a bad idea to retrieve any url since then an attacker could use this service to sql inject without leaving his IP on the victims log?
- JoachimSchipper 17y agoMeh. There are plenty of open redirects out there anyway, and using one you made yourself has the disadvantage that you'll be visible in the Referrer logs.
- brown9-2 17y agoI'd imagine most of these services just do GETs, which negates most of that possibility.
- algorias 17y agoBeaten with their own weapons: http://mug.gd/l5g1W http://mug.gd/l5g1W
- bradgessler 17y agoI just made them an awesome and fun URL shortening service! http://mug.gd/IUyt0 http://mug.gd/IUyt0
- ramchip 17y agoAmusing example :) I wasn't aware just how many posts on TC are about Twitter.
- secos 17y agoYeah, I picked that because no matter what time of day or week you look at the site, there is /always/ a Twitter post on the front page of TC.
- fbailey 17y agoI noticed that one URL shortener is engaging in massive Cookie Dropping, as soon as you click on a link you add 50 affiliate cookies ... nice business modell, not so nice service
- dc2k08 17y agoWhich one?
- lupin_sansei 17y agothey are also bad in that if one goes out of business or loses their database all the links on the web that use the shortener stop working forever
- RevRal 17y agoI think this is the best point against URL shorteners.
- megamark16 17y agoI'll second that. The whole point of the internet (at least as I see it) of linking relevant documents together is pretty much lost when those links are fragile shortened urls. Maybe if there was a markup, similar to the img alt tag, that allowed you to say "Here's the short one, if that doesn't work, here's the full one". The real issue, as I see it, is that people solved the wrong problem. I see this a lot at my new job, where they created bigger problems for themselves by asking the wrong questions and therefor solving the wrong problem. Isn't the main reason people use shortened URLs so that they can link to things on sites like Twitter where every character counts? If that is the case then the real problem isn't that URLs are too long, it's that Twitter counts them against you, instead of allowing people to put actual hyperlinks (you know, <a href="xyz">Title</a>) in their tweets. If the only part that counted against your character count was the Title section then we wouldn't have this problem. They could even simplify the markup somehow to make it more user friendly then actual HTML. If I've misunderstood the problem that URL shorteners are trying to solve then I apologize for my off the mark rant. Thanks Mark
- workhorse 17y agoMark I think the problem is the 140 character limit. The HTML markup would be included in that. Twitter takes a website address and turns it into a link when it is displayed on their website. But if a Tweet is sent via a mobile phone, they are limited by the 160 (I think that is the SMS limit). So HTML markup counts. Which is why using a shorter URL is key.
- naz 17y agoCool idea, terrible implementation
- secos 17y agoWhat do you dislike about it? I know its not the best, and would love critical feedback on how it could be better.
- naz 17y agoIt immediately displays a bar at the top of the altered page making it too obvious
- secos 17y agoI was going for obvious. There is (currently) a way around that. I say currently because I have updates to fix it. I know this would be a "fun tool" for some people to play jokes and pranks on other people, but cannot in good conscious let that happen without /some/ level of indication.
- tzury 17y agoUse Firefox's extension LongURLPlease http://www.longurlplease.com/ http://www.longurlplease.com/ and bring some sense into all these tweets
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- buster 17y agonow that's a neat plugin. Wish i'd be for chrome too, though. Nice anyway :)
- simonw 17y agoI dislike URL shorteners because they increase the chance of link rot. mug.gd doesn't prove they are evil though - it proves that links are evil.
- secos 17y agovery good point. That is basically what I am after... they hide the true origin and intent when they hide the content in an iframe.
- gvb 17y agoOh man, that came at a good time. The previous HN story is "Korea's Internet Is Mired in a Microsoft Monoculture (chosun.com)" so I did a URL shortener substituting [company] for "Korea." The only problem was that I could not selectively substitute for both "Korea" and "Korean" (I tried ordering them, didn't help), so Korean became [company]n. Mug.gd doesn't say how long the shortened url lasts, so I hope my gentle readers click the link before it rots. :-/
- jjs 17y agoCan you recursively mug a mug.gd link?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- there 17y agoi'm still waiting for malware to propagate by a shortened url that goes to a legitimate site, builds up credibility (retweeted, etc.) and then is swapped out on the shortening site to start redirecting to a different page that looks like the original but does some drive-by download or exploits a zero-day vulnerability. there would be hundreds of inbound links pointing to it coming from trusted sources, and could even use a legitimate shortener like bit.ly but just make the bit.ly link direct to some other shortener that nobody would notice (because the browser redirection would happen so quickly), then do the switch at that second shortener.
- BigO 17y agomadlibs anyone?
- ivankirigin 17y agoAstoundingly, twitter isn't anywhere on TechCrunch. Sign of the end of times, right?
- eam 17y agoI have always been hesitant on clicking shortened URLs. I have trust issues. It's almost like a box of chocolate, you never know what you're going to get!
- jusob 17y agoThen it is time for you to use a safe URL shortenner: http://safe.mn/ http://safe.mn/ :-) IE, these URLs could lead to a "dangerous" website, but you are warned before reaching the final destination: http://safe.mn/-M http://safe.mn/-M http://safe.mn/WP http://safe.mn/WP http://safe.mn/TU http://safe.mn/TU http://safe.mn/Te http://safe.mn/Te
- techiferous 17y ago"URL Shorteners are evil" That's why I always use http://www.hugeurl.com/ http://www.hugeurl.com/
- kree10 17y agoI am partial to http://urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com/ http://urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com/
- GBKS 17y agoNot all are evil, try Hapylink at http://hapylink.com http://hapylink.com
- Goladus 17y agoTrust is a powerful thing. You can get a lot more done when you have trust. It would be a shame to break that trust for no real reason other than it seemed like a clever idea at the time.