Link Shortening Tools are High Risk

03 Feb, 2026

In days of old, link shortening tools were all the range. They addressed a specific issue with early social media services; especially Twitter, which had a character limit of 140 (remember those days).

If you included a long link to a news article, or blog post, you were eating into the 140 count relatively fast.

Link shortening services were born. The first major player was tinyurl in 2002, followed by bit.ly a few years later in 2008. They all followed the same process: visit their website, provide your long link (url) and they offer you are far shorter one -- usually a random collection of letters and numbers. This meant that:

https://forkingmad.blog/link-shortening-tools

might become: tinyfork.com/61iujf4

Reducing character space from 45 to 20

Time corrects everything

Twitter, the most obvious need for short links, changed the rules in 2016 and links no longer counted, and in 2017 they doubled the character limit to 280. The rules, limits, and counting have continued to evolve.

The need for link shortening services has basically disappeared.

Twitter aside, some people still insist on using them all over the Web.

The major issue

When you see a shortened link you have absolutely no idea where you will end up. It's like a lottery. You put trust in the person sending the link that it will take you where they suggest. Example: "Follow this link for my blog post" style of message.

Should you trust the short link?

For all you know, the link could take you to an unexpected website -- potentially malicious. You could land on a porn site, or a website with tracking code; attempting to install software; stealing your data. These are all very possible options.

Some shortening services will act as an intermediary and show you where you are about to be sent -- as a safety net. Others will allow you to copy & paste the link and it will show you where you will end up. Do you really want the additional hassle?!

So why do legitimate people/sites still use them?

Probably for tracking. They can create multiple short links to the same page, and use these links in different scenarios. This helps with tracking and identifies where you came from based on the short link.

Another possible option is a more user-friendly link to read/print. Some websites have very long links and are difficult to convey easily to others. Using a short link allows you to type/read it out to others, or remember(?) it potentially.

Solutions

• Don't use link shortening.
• If you need tracking, every web site/blogging tool offers tracking directly on the site.
• You can easily create aliases for web pages if you want to have multiple links to the same page.
• If you really need an easy-to-remember link, use your own domain plus a short alias link.

Finally

I NEVER click on a short link, for all the above reasons. I've no interest in checking the link first of all. I want a frictionless experience if you would like me to visit your site.

#Tech #security