Long URL Please – Firefox Plugin for Link Safety

If you didn't know, because of Twitter and other social sites with space restrictions on posts, there are new "url shortening" services out there like "tinyurl" that instead of showing you something like this:

http://lifehacker.com/5234539/long-url-please-replaces-shortened-links-with-the-real-thing

Shows you something like this instead http://tinyurl.com/cblos7

The advantage is that you save valuable space on your tweets or blog posts, but the disadvantage is that you have no idea where you're really going. Considering that sometimes the only thing that keeps you from getting hacked is NOT going to bad websites, these shortening services present an enormous risk to your computer security.

However, if you go to the Lifehacker article linked above, you'll find an article that describes a plugin for Firefox that will replace the shortened URL with the full one (providing several different options for how they are displayed.

A side by side comparison of a typical string of tweets (short urls included) and what they look like after being expanded

To get the plugin, follow the link from the Lifehacker article, or just click here to go directly to the plugin's page.

Alternatives

If you aren't using Firefox or can't install the plugin for some reason, most shortening services have a preview function that allows you to see the URL you're going to before actually going there. To activate the preview feature, do the following: