ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Simos Xenitellis <simos.lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 2:49 PM, Mitchell Reese
<dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Wasn't aware either of the etiquette - nor could I care. The links were
> really useful - thanks heaps for posting them! Would be awesome to see more
> such posts in the future.

The issue with shortened links is that they can present security and
privacy risks.

For example, for privacy: the t.co link would redirect to an
intermediary website which would log the full request, then redirect
to the final destination.

For security, it can redirect to an intermediary website that would
filter out important visitors (for example, those that connect from
certain companies), and deliver malicious payload.

If you want to check where a shortened URL points to, you would need
to open a terminal and type

$ curl -v https://t.co/B1exFdmB88
...
< HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
< cache-control: private,max-age=300
< content-length: 0
< date: Tue, 06 Sep 2016 13:32:30 GMT
< expires: Tue, 06 Sep 2016 13:37:30 GMT
< location: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12433739
...

So, no shortened URLs.

Simos