Spammers Establish Fake URL-Shortening Services 99
Orome1 writes "Spammers are establishing their own fake URL-shortening services to perform URL redirection, according to Symantec. This new spamming activity has contributed to this month's increase in spam by 2.9 percentage points, a rise that was also expected following the Rustock botnet takedown in March. Under this scheme, shortened links created on these fake URL-shortening sites are not included directly in spam messages. Instead, the spam emails contain shortened URLs created on legitimate URL-shortening sites. These shortened URLs lead to a shortened-URL on the spammer's fake URL-shortening Web site, which in turn redirects to the spammer's own Web site."
Good news, no? (Score:4, Interesting)
It was to be expcted (Score:5, Interesting)
I always found url shortening to be a weird and potentially dangerous practice. Trading some comfort to squeeze your link into a tweet for the comfort to actually predict where this link will take you? No thanks. If url does not fit into a tweet, then it's a tweeter problem that tweeter should fix. That's also why I don't use tweeter. I find IRC superior :)
Re:It was to be expcted (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen URL shortening used in print magazines for quite a long time as well though. Where it makes sense as you have to type the URL by hand to visit it. So Twitter isn't the only use case.