Fight Against Obfuscated URL's

An Obfuscated URL is one in which the intermediate and/or the final destination
of a URL is unknown because a different, tiny, or shortened URL has been
substituted for any number of possible reasons. The motivation for the
substituted URL may or may not be nefarious or malicious.

The Short Version: You are sending a long URL in an email. The recipient of your email claims the URL does not resolve. You realize the long URL got wrapped, or wrecked, or separated, or changed by your or their email client which rerendered the URL and broke it. You explain this to the recipient, they have the option to manually rebuild the URL and then it resolves. Or, the recipient is unable to fix the broken URL so then you use TinyURL.com or MakeaShorterLink.com which magically generates a very short new URL which you resend to your mail recipient. They click on the short URL and it works.

The Long Version: The following is a discussion of the potential down side of shortening, thus Obfuscating, a long URL into a short URL.

obfuscate: | verb [ trans. ] render obscure, unclear, or unintelligible : the spelling changes will deform some familiar words and obfuscate their etymological origins. • bewilder (someone) : it is more likely to obfuscate people than enlighten them. DERIVATIVES obfuscation | noun obfuscatory | adjective ORIGIN late Middle English : from late Latin obfuscat- ‘darkened,’ from the verb obfuscare, based on Latin fuscus ‘dark.’

I had not considered your well argued points in light of the unknown, possibly nefarious ramifications. Skip the next two paragraphs and the notes if you don't have the time to read my diatribe about what may be a harmless example of what you speak, but it illustrates what you say on a very real level.

Case in point, I was trolling around a site called www.dashboardwidgets.com in search of the current state of affairs surrounding the efficacy of widgets. As I recall, when Tiger was released and I fired up a handful of the early widgets, besides the realization (I think you may have been the one to bring it to our attention on the OSX List) that there's a huge security "hole" of potential danger associated with "any" new widget as there is with "any" new application as to it's true nature and ethics, there was at the time anyway on my machine a huge overhead hit which I could not justify.

Not to digress, but a long time ago there was a huge outcry from PhotoShop users when it was discovered Adobe had not disclaimed to it's users they incorporated a little piece of "spy code" that checked your serial number and correlated it to your name to see if more than the agreed upon number of installations were present anywhere on the known Internet. Adobe never pursued anyone to my knowledge based upon this secretive scan and information collection which is no doubt still on file somewhere presumably it was discussed later in various forums because of the predictable PR backlash. Today however, as our freedoms and privacy seems to be slipping away, we become slightly more numb with the passage of time and the public's attention threshold has been steadily eroded by the likes of Jerry Springer, and perhaps we have all become a little too complacent regarding the degree of trust we place in our dealings with the powers that be around us; such is human nature, and the age-old complexities and simplicities of trust. Bottom line is Adobe retained their most valuable asset . . . . their Reputation.

As I was saying, at the dashboardwidgets.com site I found a utility widget that suited my needs on eBay to present me with a concise matrix of my bidding activities on a floating applet which updates itself every few minutes to keep me informed of when various auctions end.

The point of all this is that the eBay widget, turns out, when you launch it jumps through an outfit called "Commission Junction" at cj.com and when I started looking into all this based on some of the user outrage comments on the widget site (I'm surprised the comments were not purified or sanitized by the host ;-) that there is a mercantile intent behind the "free" of charge widget, which was not disclosed. All of this interestingly relates directly to your post regarding obfuscated URL's to the extent that in using what appeared ostensibly to be an innocuous widget ended up reportedly jumping from URL to URL quite a few times totally unknown to me, and with a hidden agenda. Suddenly I had fallen victim to my own TinyURL "best habits" comment and I didn't like it one bit. You were wise and polite in pointing out what I had not considered, and the implications of your warning about URL's in general not being what they might appear to be on the surface, hit home. Now I understand.

Understand that some URL obfuscation is totally innocuous.

John

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Notes on Commission Junction's surreptitious non-disclosed role behind the scenes.

The eBay widget tool advertisement is here, as well as the comments:

http://www.dashboardwidgets.com/showcase/details.php?wid=287

Note I did not obfuscate the URL <g>

COMMENTS about Commission Junction on the Widget Web Page:

"Any good reason that this ebay widget redirects searches via ' Commission Junction' before searching ebay?
http://www.cj.com/ "

"These offers and links are served and tracked by Commission Junction through the qksrv.net domain. When an email recipient or a visitor to a publisher's Web site makes an actual purchase online or fills out a form, that transaction is tracked and recorded by Commission Junction. Commission Junction handles all of the collection and processing required to ensure fair and timely commission payment for the publisher, and all of the administration and verification necessary to ensure qualified sales and leads for the advertiser."

"Ahhh ... Commission Junction. That must be why PithHelmet blocks all requests from this widget. A little more honesty from the author would have been appreciated. Widget is now removed from my computer."

"I too removed the Widget after I noticed that it bounced around a lot of web sites before getting to eBay. I found another that goes straight to eBay and is much faster. To be honest, I thought, once I saw it bouncing all over the internet, that it was some sort of spyware. And it kinda panicked me. I guess it should say, somewhere in the documentation, that using it follows a definte path that is designed to generate income for the author. I don't deny anyone a right to make dough. But I think you really ought to be a little more straightforward about it. Widget removed."

"I did not know before, but I guess that I have learned the hard way what "referalware" is, and believe that it is something that I will stay away from, and do my best to let others know about. Had there been a disclaimer telling me exactly what would be happening by downloading this program, I may have felt different. I mean, I would not have demanded a cut of the action or anything (considering it's my computer that's runnng funding your returns...). But at least I could have decided that EVERYTIME I RUN YOUR PROGRAM, I AM FACILITATING PAYMENT TO YOU WITH MY BANDWIDTH AND CPU CYCLES. I might even have paid a minor shareware fee. This was just a bit underhanded."
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