Twitter is a microblogging service where you can post only up to 140 characters, so the links shared on twitter cannot be full length url, it is shortened using url shortening service and posted on twitter. Many a times, we are not aware of spam links or any affiliate links which are masked with these shortening urls and spreaded like fire on twitter.
Most of the twitter accounts are hacked using these shortened spam links which are sent as Direct message on twitter. How to avoid all this ? The only option to overcome these issue is, we should know the exact full url, so that we get realize and do not click the urls. Today we have 3 tools or three methods to decode the shortened url before clicking on it.
3 Ways to Decode the Shortened URL
1. Enable TinyURL Preview Feature
As you all know, tinyurl is one of the famous url shortening service, and it has an inbuilt preview feature. You can enable and disable the feature. If you want to know where the shortened tinyurl link is going, you should enable this feature. After enabling this feature, whatever tinyurl link which you link, will be redirected to the tinyurl homepage and it will show you the full length url. If you’re satisfied with the url, you can proceed to the website. You can majorly avoid spam and phishing links.
You can enable the tinyurl preview feature here. – http://tinyurl.com/preview.php
2. Cool Previews
Cool previews is a Firefox addon, which helps you to preview the links without opening to a new page or new tab. You can preview all the links such as full length url or shortened url. We have covered about this in detail and you can take a look at here.
3. LongURL Mobile Expander
This method is the best and my favorite way to find out where shortened links really go. You should always know where a link takes you before clicking on it. LongURL firefox addon helps you to find out the full length url just by moving your mouse hover the shortened url.
By keeping your mouse pointer over the shortened links, a pop-up kind of thing appears beneath the shortened url, which clearly explains the Title and full url of the page. There is also “More” link, if you click the more link, it takes you to the LongURL.org web service which shows you the details of the page.
LongURL Mobile Expander Firefox add-on – Mozilla Add-on Page
Note – All these can be used on any websites which has shortened links, not restricted for twitter alone.
If you find any other method to decode the shortened links, do share it with us !
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Nice post…these are some useful tools. Also there is an option in Tweetdeck to preview shortened url’s
.-= Rahul Jadhav´s last blog ..Create Beautiful Blogger Templates With Template Designer =-.
Yeah, many twitter clients have these features, but these tools will be of great help to web interface users :)
nice methods.. here’s another one :
u can have echofon in your firefox browser , whenever u hover on a link in echofon .. (tinyurl or bit.ly or is.gd) u will get a orginal url link as a tooltip ..
.-= Jaspal´s last blog ..100+ Facebook Apps For Productivity And Tools For Achieving All Your Goals =-.
Yes, Hootsuite also has this feature in-built, When we click the plus button beside the link, you can see the original link
Thank you for sharing these tools will definitely make my web surfing SPAM free. I’ve been getting a lot of spams lately because of this short URLs. This will definitely make my time online more worthwhile and productive.
wonderful Share GK
.-= Chethan´s last blog ..Google Buzz displays Google Ads for your Shared Feeds and Posts =-.
Thanks for sharing mate, great tools!
.-= Malibu Rum´s last blog ..Malibu Rum Traffic Jam =-.
Great information! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. Thanks!
Just joined up :)