The Good and the Bad of URL Shorteners
An article on eConsultancy.com discussing the demise of the tr.im URL shortening service mentioned some information security concerns:
...it's impossible to know where they are linking and they can contribute to the spread of malware. But their ease of use keeps growing their popularity. And the companies keep track of all of the information that is shared through shortening, which will be very valuable soon.
There are good discussions concerning URL shorteners on Joshua Schachter's blog, the Mashable social media guide and the Security Retentive corporate information security blog. These will be a little technical for many people but essentially, apart from the privacy aspect of collecting data, other things might be worth worrying about more (you need to check this!). If you can, create your own aliasing/redirecting system on your own domain. But make sure it can only be used to redirect to a limited number of your own website's URLs.
Interestingly, tr.im is another example where organisations may have been using a service for which they had no contract, service level agreement or rights when the service was withdrawn. Be careful what you reply upon.
Posted on: 11 August 2009 at 18:30 hrs
Comments are filtered automatically and should appear shortly after they been checked.