Think Before You Click

A while back, I saw a tweet someone made which says it all. She talked about how she doesn’t think twice clicking short URLs when she’s on Twitter.

There’s nothing wrong with TinyURL in fact, this is not a post bashing the service. I like it and it’s certainly very handy. I also like my new favorite URL shortener, Bit.ly. But sometimes I can’t help but think Twitter will soon if not already be used to spread viruses and other nasty wares because it’s easy and there are lots of people on Twitter who have come to expect a shortened URL and don’t normally think twice about clicking them.

One way to protect ourselves is by using a tool like Long URL Please. If you’re not using Firefox, you can drag and drop the bookmarklet to your bookmarks then just click it when you want to see the URL. The page will refresh and instead of shortened URLs, you’ll see the actual URLs. If you are using Firefox, you might want to install the plugin.