• KeyDog
  • KeyDog
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  • Registered: 2008-12-12
  • Posts: 1,693

Topic: Should tinyurls - redirects - be switched into default preview mode?

Today I came across this spam post


<a href="http://tinyurl.com/m7ryjy">How to Train a Puppy</a> and <a href="http://tinyurl.com/nzluf2">Small Dog Breeds</a>
[url=http://discuss.joyent.com/profile.php?section=personality&id=49712]http://discuss.joyent.com/profile.php?section=personality&id=49712[/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/23s7omg]Puppy Training[/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/25x8dgq]Puppy Training[/url]

After speaking to the founder it turns out tinyurl has a cool function to add 

preview.

before 

tinyurl.com/xxx

so I was able to find the backlinks (without going to the spammers site) the guys above are generating traffic for:

http://www.puppy-training-at-home.com/     Small Dog Breeds 
http://hubpages.com/profile/puppytraining09     Puppy Training 
http://ezinearticles.com/?expert_bio=Ricky_Chea    Puppy Training

Now I'm wondering should every URL from tinyurl be parsed to preview.tinyurl ?

2 Reply by Grez

  • Grez
  • PunBB senior member
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  • From: Czech Republic
  • Registered: 2008-12-03
  • Posts: 248

Re: Should tinyurls - redirects - be switched into default preview mode?

Unfortunately there's plenty of sites like tinyurl, and doing preview for each of them would be... quite hard. Actually the better way would imo be to persuade tinyurl (and other sites) founder to crosscheck url on their side. I believe they use something like that already for sites infected with viruses smile

Eraversum - scifi browser-based online webgame

Grez's Website

  • KeyDog
  • KeyDog
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  • Registered: 2008-12-12
  • Posts: 1,693

Re: Should tinyurls - redirects - be switched into default preview mode?

I thought maybe there's a way to add an admin page, or include on features page like the online_plus extension (improved online list) that the admin can define urls tld's and where they  should link to...

So 2 fields:
1. URL pattern to watch for (if URL = http://tinyurl.com/)
2. URL to send to (url http://tinyurl.com/xxx = http://preview.tinyurl.com/)

Maybe add the top 10 redirect sites like that. If someone is using a redirect site the forum admin doesn't like he could use another section in admin with 2 fields also:

1. URL to block use of  (Enter URL a)
2. We suggest you use (Enter URL b)  instead of URL a
the admin could enter URL b he trusts to do better job of policing...