Make Use of has 6 URL shorteners they recommend, would I recommend them?

Several of the services on this list have been used in Spam campaigns. Bitly is one, as well as cutt.ly.

All URL shorteners say that using it for Spam is not allowed, but I still see bitly links in my contact forms.

I like the ones where I can report the bad links, and one that did this which I wrote about was cutt.us if my memory serves.

I believe a lot of these URL shorteners are located outside the United States, but I do not know this to be factual.

Bit.LY or bitly.com is at the top of the list. They’re more popular and as I said above, this one as well as several others not on this list have been used in spam campaigns.

I’d love to take a look at bl.inc but this one is a fully paid site. So far, I’ve not seen any URL’s from them, so make sure you read up on this one if you want to pay for it.

cutt.ly has been used for spam and malware delivery. Any one of these URL shorteners who can’t allow users to report Spam should not be used. I believe this one does, so if I were one to use them on a regular basis, I’d use this one. This is personal opinion though.

Tiny URL has been around just as long as bitly. Haven’t seen it used much, but its been known to include spam campaigns. Last I looked at it, it did not have any way to report URL’s that are bad.

short.io I’ve never heard of. The write up on it sounds good though, but again, I’d be looking to see if there is a way to report abuse. Actors are known to use shorteners, especially popular ones.

Finally, ReBrandly is the last item. Never heard of these guys, but this one looks interesting too.

In conclusion, if you use these, use them responsibly. Make sure that you use it legitimately, and if you receive links, you run them through an expander like expand URL.

Sites like Virus Total can unpack a shortened link too as part of their offering and I’ve seen multiple redirects using some of these services. Just be careful if you’re going to use such a service.

If you’re using your own web hosting, I’d use my own web site to redirect people. For example, the RSS feed for the tech podcasts is being redirected through my web site over to Anchor.

The URL is technology.jaredrimer.net/audio which I had used for my podcast before I decided to sign up for Anchor.

One of our other sites, the Blind VMS team up, has a URL directly to the blog post about it.

Stieve uses one of these shorteners but uses his own domain he baught. It makes sense and he described how he got his to work. I could find great uses for it, but you need to make sure to use something that will meet your needs.

Stay safe out there! Great article by these guys.