Short Links and the Dangers they Pose

 

So many things take place on the Internet these days. The dangerous ones are the ones that we need to know about so that we can protect ourselves from them and eventually be safe to use and enjoy the Internet and all that it has to offer. Short links, also known as shortened and tiny URLs are some of the dangers that people need to be warned about on the Internet because they could prevent you from achieving your online goals.

 

In the following article you will be comprehensively informed on some things about short links to help you to protect yourself from them. These short links come about as a result of someone looking for a way that they can post a shorter link rather than a long link to direct people to their websites.

 

There is a link shortening service that is used in order to give out a shorter link version of a once long link, and all of these links will direct you to the same site. The problem is that someone may use this in order to redirect you to a site that will in the end leave you with a malware infection on your computer.

 

Therefore even though short links may not always be used for the wrong reasons, it pays to stay informed of the dangers they pose so you can be more cautious when you encounter them online. 

 

Short links can be dangerous

A bad person on the Internet could use short links to spread a certain malware, and then benefit from it in the end. Since short links do not have the name of the website or anything that can tell a surfer the website the link is directing him or her to. So you could blindly follow a link that could lead you to the entrapment of a malware.

 

That is why it is good to find out where the link is directing you to first before following it so that you can tell if it is safe to follow or not. In this case, it is usually recommended that you avoid following short links.

 

In fact many people fall prey to these malware links because they are posted on popular sites like the social networks because this is where people tend to easily click on links without really thinking twice. You need to be careful all the time so that you will not fall victim to the possible malware infestation of these short links and enhance your safety as you use the Internet.

 

How to be Safe with Short Links

Use a link expansion service in order to check out what the destination of a link is before you click on it. This will help you to decide beforehand if you really want to go to that site or not. If you see it’s a site that you do not know anything about, you should not click on the short link as it could be from a malicious person.

 

There are many link expansion services that you can use, such as Untiny.me and LongURL. Just copy the short link and paste it on any of these sites and you will quickly and immediately see the destination of the link.

 

The short links are here to stay because they make the work very easy for website developers as they advertise their sites. But although they are not all bad, your best bet of staying free from malware among numberous other Internet insecurities is to avoid short links, or to only click on short links that you are totally certain of their destination.