In emails I receive, and in your tips here, I often see web addresses
that include things like goo.gl and bit.ly. What are these? Are they safe? They
look awfully suspicious!
We can't promise that any specific
URLs are particularly safe, but these kinds of URLs on their own aren't any
more dangerous than any other URL you might click on. But what are they?
As you know, many URLs can be
lengthy (try looking in the browser’s URL bar when you shop on Amazon.com, for
example—the URL is long, like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1478242779/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d4_i6?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-5&pf_rd_r=18WZHRTY70743PVFH8JM&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938731&pf_rd_i=507846/.
If you want to send someone a URL in an email message, it’s possible the URL
will wrap with line breaks so that the recipient can’t simply click on it to
navigate to the correct site. Or, you might want to send a URL in a tweet, or
in a text message, both of which have character limits.
To work around this problem,
several different sites have created URL shorteners, which maintain an internal
list of the original URLs along with a custom “short” URL that redirects to the
same site. You can easily create a shortened URL from any long URL, using the
services provided at http://goo.gl (a service
provided by Google) or http://bit.ly (to name just
a few). In each case, you can navigate to one of those sites, type in the long
URL, and the site will provide you with a corresponding short URL for use in
emails, tweets, or texts (or printed articles, like these tips).
Several URL-shortening sites
also provide browser add-ins to make it easier to shorten URLs. If you add the goo.gl
URL Shortener add-in (http://goo.gl/ygGS6) to
Chrome, and you can then shorten URLs directly from the browser without having
to navigate to a new site to do the job. You can find similar URL shortener
add-ins for other browsers and other sites, as well.
One final issue: the original
question asked if these shortened URLs are safe. As we said, clicking them is
as safe as clicking any other URL (that is, not very safe), but there’s an
added risk: Because the shortened URLs really don’t give you any indication of
where they’ll take you, you need to be wary before clicking one from an unknown
source. We find the Google Chrome add-in
named Expand useful (http://goo.gl/7QmbJ).
This add-in allows you to hover over a shortened link, and see the full URL
before you click on the shortened URL. This seems like a good idea to us:
Verify that the shortened URL goes somewhere you trust before you click on it.
It’s easy to create and use
shortened URLs, and although you should be wary of any URL, you should be extra
wary of shortened URLs (because they conceal the ultimate target address)—use a
tool like the Expand add-in to check out the URL before clicking it.
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