URL shorteners, handy tools or spyware?

bit.ly stores six months cookie

[lammert]

Since twitter, URL shorteners are hot again. The small size of the message you can create makes it almost mandatory to use some sort of URL shortener if you want to embed an URL in your message.

I recently checked a bit.ly redirect URL with a server header checker and noticed that it stores a cookie on your system with an expiration header of six months. This makes it the ideal tool to track user behavior of individual visitors.

Most users of the bit.ly shortened URLs have never been to the bit.ly homepage, had never the chance to read the privacy policy over there and had never the chance to opt out of this. It also seems according to bit.ly's privacy policy that the only way to opt out is to disable cookies from their domain before you have visited their site.

These people are creating a massive user behavior database of a very large group of Internet users, without the large part of the users ever knowing it.

Useful or spyware, what is your opinion on URL shorteners?

[gpilling]

These people are creating a massive user behavior database of a very large group of Internet users, without the large part of the users ever knowing it.

As is every other site with any traffic. User behavior is a product than can be sold, how else will bitly ever monetize? Also, most internet users are like my mother - it is an interactive tv and they have no clue how it works or what is being done behind the scenes.

[lammert]

The difference is that bit.ly is not creating a behavior database based on their own services. Other sites will only log user activities which is directly related to those specific sites. Bit.ly is a man in the middle without serving any visible content.

[londrum]

this kind of thing happens all over the place, without you knowing it. most people have their firefox browser set to pre-fetch their next likely destination, to speed up page loading time. so you can interact with sites and end up with a load of cookies on your system without ever clicking their link.
i think google does that to the top links on their search results page too.

[pageoneresults]

What is your opinion on URL shorteners?

They are a necessary evil in the 21st Century. Twitter popularized URI Shorteners. It all started with TinyURL and then spiraled out of control from there. The competition heated up and next thing you know there were over 10 services on the market. Today, many have built their own shortener to maintain a brand connection and provide complete statistical reporting for those shorts. There are probably thousands if you count all the personalized setups.

Note: When it comes to bit.ly or j.mp (bit.ly's shorter brother) did you know all you have to do for statistics is add a plus + symbol to end of the URI Short? Yes, it is that simple. :)

Twitter have changed their routines on how they handle URI shortening. There used to be a 30 character window where you could post a certain URI construct and it would not convert. I know, I tested this for months, those following me will tell you that I did plenty of testing and nailed down the exact formulas.

The current routine allows you to post up to 139 characters without the shortening taking place. That means you don't need to use a URI Shortener if your destination URI and the characters of your Tweet do not exceed 139. If you hit the 140 mark, the URI will be shortened via Bit.ly and be assigned a random Base 36 string. Note, there are some funky URI strings that may invoke the shortening routine by default.

Personally? I'm moving away from the use of a URI Short when possible. And yes, they are notorious these days for leading you to spyware, malware, etc. That's why it is best not to use them. If you have to, I ALWAYS recommend that you use the custom naming options to at least personalize the URI Short and give it some credibility, trust. Those default random Base 36 strings aren't exactly the most trustworthy looking links, are they? ;)

P.S. I think we can also thank the author of the Title Slug Plugin, that is really where this all started. Those 5, 6, 10 and 15 word titles being converted to hyphenated URI strings are a bear to manage in Social Media environments. Also, if you are using underscores instead of hyphens, the probability of invoking a shortening routine increases.