6 replies
Maybe this has been brought up previously though a search returned no fruits.

I had a tinyurl link setup in an old PDF report. (I had to use tinyurl since an error would occur otherwise).

Upon clicking the link today I was greeted with a Swedish news website.

I know my computer is clean and it's the link itself which somehow changed.

Has anyone experienced this?

It doesn't give me much confidence knowing that my links may suddenly link elsewhere sometime in the future without me knowing about it.
#hijack #link #tinyurl
  • Profile picture of the author wfhblueprints
    Originally Posted by Daniel Evans View Post

    Maybe this has been brought up previously though a search returned no fruits.

    I had a tinyurl link setup in an old PDF report. (I had to use tinyurl since an error would occur otherwise).

    Upon clicking the link today I was greeted with a Swedish news website.

    I know my computer is clean and it's the link itself which somehow changed.

    Has anyone experienced this?

    It doesn't give me much confidence knowing that my links may suddenly link elsewhere sometime in the future without me knowing about it.
    Hi Daniel,

    Doesn't sound good to be honest and I hope its a glitch for your sake!

    I've never used URL shorteners for that reason.....ive personally used a domain for redirects only in PDFs which are going to be around a while.

    However i do know that bit.ly offer a pro service (For free if i recall) that allows you to edit links etc....it might be a direction to go if your own domain cannot be used.

    Hope it sorts itself out.

    Chris
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  • Profile picture of the author kimhopkins
    what error would occur if you didnt use a tiny url?

    Is the pdf hosted on your site?
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Evans
      Originally Posted by kimhopkins View Post

      what error would occur if you didnt use a tiny url?

      Is the pdf hosted on your site?
      Links in the PDF to the Warrior Forum were failing as were directs to the Plimus affiliate signup page.

      The copy was held locally. The link therefore wasn't physically altered.
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  • Profile picture of the author SteveJohnson
    You shouldn't have ANY confidence in an outside linking service. Aside from links being changed, what if tinyurl or bitly or whatever just ceased to exist tomorrow? Stranger things have been known to happen.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by SteveJohnson View Post

      Aside from links being changed, what if tinyurl or bitly or whatever just ceased to exist tomorrow? Stranger things have been known to happen.
      That's even putting it mildly: even I'm old enough to remember a time that "tinyurl" itself did "just cease to exist the next day". It went under (but on that occasion was bought by another company from the liquidator, and was effectively resurrected, which may not happen next time).

      There's no need to rely on the continuity and security of unnecessary third-party services outside one's own control, when there are better alternatives available (such as "prettylink", redirected .info domain-names, and so on).

      Anyone potentially interested in bit.ly might find this rather chilling reading: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe | :Ben Metcalfe Blog
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  • Profile picture of the author mattjay
    hello daniel,
    i don't use those pretty much on anything REALLY important, however i still sometimes use googles just when i'm going after raw clicks and nothing else. i have never had any issues with them at all.
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