Recently there have been posts everywhere about this subject of the problems or rather security threats associated with URL shortening services. As someone who uses TinyURL an awful lot these days I feel I should just make people aware of this. Here is the best article the I have found on the subject. It covers it in complete detail, but below are the important points.

The most obvious risk associated with URL shortening is that it’s difficult to know where the URL will take you, until you click it. Often when I receive a dubious link via email, I hover my mouse over the URL, or view the HTML source to discover the real URL destination address and evaluate if I trust it enough to click. With a shortened URL, it’s hard to know where it will take me, until I click it. Email Phishing scams are using URL shortening service for this very reason.

What does this mean? Well, simply don’t go clicking on any shortened URL’s from untrusted sources. This should go without saying for ALL URL’s, but with the shored ones being thrown around so freely these days it is important to reiterate.

I also learned about the following preview feature that I didn’t know exited. The article points out other levels of security that the services are taking as well. If you are interested in learning more I highly recommend checking out the full article.

Many URL shortening services have added some level of “see before you click” functionality. For example, any tinyurl can be prepended with the text “preview” in the URL and it will not redirect, but show the destination URL for inspection at tinyurl.com.
Take the tinyurl above
http://tinyurl.com/bngrky

and modify it as follows:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/bngrky