Short Links: See Where They Go Before You Tap

Tap, ask or skip

• Tap only when all three are true: you asked for the link or expected it, you could confirm it with the sender another way, and the message around it is not about logging in, a bonus or a payment.
• Ask when the sender is someone you know but the link is a surprise, or when you cannot preview it. Ask for the full link and wait.
• Skip when it comes from a stranger, an advert, a comment or a group you barely know; when it promises a bonus or a prize; when it rushes you; or when it is about logging in or paying. Skipping costs a minute. A wrong tap can cost an account.

Before you decide, paste the short link into the login link checker above. If the shortening service is one it knows, it says Medium. Why that is all it can say comes further down.

Seeing the destination without visiting it

Try these in order.

1. Ask the sender for the full link, or for the name of the page it leads to. Someone who sent the link in good faith can paste the long one. A sender who will not has told you something useful.
2. Use the shortening service’s preview, if it has one. Some services show a preview page when you add a plus sign to the end of the short link, or give you a separate preview address. Some do not. Look on that service’s own help page for the word “preview” and follow its steps. Do not guess at addresses to try. A preview still contacts the shortening service, though it should not load the final site. If the destination loads instead of a preview, close the page and type nothing.
3. Judge by where it came from. If neither works, the source is all you have. A link you asked for, from a person you can reach another way, is not the same thing as one that dropped into a group.

What a shortener does

A link-shortening service keeps a table. On one side is a short code. On the other is a long address. When you tap https://short.example/Ab3xYz, your phone first asks the shortening service, the service answers “go to this long address”, and your browser follows. The long address flashes past. You never read it.

That is handy in a chat message, and it is also what a copycat wants, because a look-alike name can sit behind a short link where nobody sees it. Big companies run shorteners too, so a short link is not bad in itself. It is blind. On some services the person who made the link can also change where it points after sending it, so a link that led somewhere harmless yesterday may not today.

Why the checker flags it instead of opening it

The checker reads only the text of the address, so it cannot see where a link leads or who owns the site. It keeps a built-in list of about two dozen well-known shortening services. When your link is on one of them, it adds 30 points, which is Medium by itself. It does not open the link, because opening is visiting, which is exactly what you are trying to avoid, and because nothing you paste leaves your phone.

Two limits follow.

• A Medium here is about the nickname, not the destination. The checker has not seen the place the link leads to, so it is not saying that place is bad.
• A service it does not know reads as an ordinary site. https://short.example/Ab3xYz scores 0 because that service is not on the list. A short code on an unfamiliar domain deserves the same care.

A cousin of the short link is an ordinary address with a second address tucked inside it, as in ?url=https://…, which forwards you there. The checker marks that separately as “Passes you on to another address”, at 20 points.

If you already tapped one

Look at the address bar of the page you landed on, not at how the page looks, and paste that address into the checker. If it scores Medium or High, or is not the name you expected, close it. If you typed anything, follow the steps after tapping a bad link. If a code or money was involved, the after-a-scam timeline comes next.