TinyURL (Was: 8.04?)

[Dotan Cohen]

On 05/04/2008, Nils Kassube <kassube at gmx.net> wrote:
> With tinyurl you just get a redirection to the actual URL. While they can
>  find out from which site you are coming they can't really track you
>  unless you only go to URLs via tinyurl. And because you seem to be very
>  paranoid, let me ask you what do you do against beeing tracked by Google
>  and Doubleclick? You can't be seriously concerned about possibly being
>  tracked by tinyurl if you use a Gmail address.
>

I personally don't care about being tracked for the things that I do
related to the mailing lists. You are right about the Gmail address.

However, routing URLs through a third party has many implications,
including security, availability, latency, I could go on. Not the
least is that one cannot determine where the link goes. I present to
you this example:

WARNING!!! DO NOT CLICK!!!
http://tinyurl.com/3m4tt
WARNING!!! DO NOT CLICK!!!

TinyURL does have a preview feature which reduces the risk, but there
are other drawbacks as well.

My concerns about tinyurl are broader than the context of this mailing
list. So while I don't mind tinyurl knowing that I visited the ubuntu
bugtracker, there are sites that I don't want them knowing about. And
yes, there are those who tinyurl _everything_ as if they think that is
the _only_ way to pass a link.

Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?