How in the Tech

Ensuring safety when someone sends you a shortened URL

By Adam Myers ⋅ June 4, 2010 ⋅ Tags: Internet, Security

The shortening of website addresses is quite handy and useful as you share links across all the social media networks. With limits on the length of your posts wasting 50 characters on a web address just isn’t going to fly. The shortened URL service came about as a solution to communicating long addresses to friends; in email a long address may word-wrap across a few lines which makes a single click and visit problematic and relaying an address verbally can be tedious and prone to errors. It’s only logical that services like bit.ly and tiny.cc made the jump to the Twitter and Facebook realms.

One of the problems when a friend sends you a link that’s been shortened is not knowing where it will take you until you are already there. I discussed previously about a Firefox plugin that will expand the shortened URL to it’s destination address on hover which is helpful if the newly discovered information can clue you in on the linked material before visiting. However, merely knowing the domain may not be enough to protect you from some malicious website. Why would your friend send you to a site like this in the first place? One answer: they may just not know as the site is clever in it’s infection, or it may not even have come from your friend first hand – but rather a trojan acting on their behalf!

Saf.li is a new URL shortening service that will scan the provide web address using the the BitDefender anti-virus software before returning a saf.li shortened URL. The scan ensures that address is free of any malicious software, viruses, phishing attacks, etc. The scan and creation takes mere seconds and the result is peace of mind that the link is clean – whether you’ve created that link or your friend has sent you a saf.li address directly. Better, even if you are sent a shortened URL from another service, Saf.li can still scan that link and verify that it is clean and safe.

After running the scan click the Get stats graphic to obtain the results.

Saf.li is a logical and necessary extension to the crowded market of URL shortening services. It’s certainly worth more than a look or two!