How in the Tech

Expand shortened URLs to the real address

By Adam Myers ⋅ October 15, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Firefox

URL shortening services became wildly popular a few years back. Users could take a long and complicated website link and pass it to a service like Tiny URL that would condense the link and essentially make it portable. The short address could then be passed more easily through email and forums where a longer address would likely get split across multiple lines of the document – it would be too long for to display on a single line of the document basically. Today, you are more often likely to come across the shortened URLs on Twitter where the 140 character limitation exists. Services like bit.ly allow users to pass sites over Twitter without impacting the hard limit of 140 characters.

Tiny URL and bit.ly, amongst many other knock-offs, fulfill a need quite well but at the same time, they are a slap in the face of security. Security conscious people preach and stress to users not to click on links blindly. Because the shortening services effectively cloak the destined webpage, you aren’t aware of where you are going until you are already there – and then it may as well be too late if the destination is an affected virus-ridden website. Admittedly, to most, this is an over-paranoid approach to web surfing but it still bears mentioning to me. However, thanks to Firefox, their is an extension for this!

Long URL Please is a Firefox add-on that automatically expands shortened URLs transparently; meaning the tiny URL is replaced with the full address within the originating webpage. Long URL Please is simple and it’s options reflect as much. You’re given a few methods of modifying the link and the way it displays in your browser but that’s relatively it. Still, it’s a very useful add-on to me as I like to know generally where I’m headed to when I want to click on these types of URLs.