Unshort.link

Prevent short link services from tracking you šŸ‘€

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Unshort.link protects your privacy by being a proxy between you and the shortlink services. It helps against malicious short links asou see the url that is hidden behind the shortlink before you acess it. On top we check the url against a blacklist.
Unshort.link gallery image
Unshort.link gallery image
Launch tags:
Privacy
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What do you think? ā€¦

simon_frey_eu
Maker
I did build the link unshorten service unshort.link to protect me against link shorteners (e.g. bitly, tinycc) tracking me, if there are any question regarding unshort.link coming up I am happy to answer them here in the comments šŸ„° ā© š—Ŗš—µš—®š˜ š—²š˜…š—®š—°š˜š—¹š˜† š—±š—¼š—²š˜€ š˜‚š—»š˜€š—µš—¼š—暝˜.š—¹š—¶š—»š—ø š—±š—¼? The server accesses the shortlinks (e.g. https://tinyurl.com/qlhjpjn) for you and directly redirects you to the long url of it. By doing so, the shortlink service can't track you as they only see the IP address of unshort.link. It acts as proxy between you and the service. On top of that, it removes known tracking parameters (e.g. utm_source) and checks the sites against a blacklist. ā© š—Ŗš—µš˜† š—±š—¼ š˜€š—µš—¼š—暝˜š—¹š—¶š—»š—øš˜€ š—½š—暝—¼š˜ƒš—¶š—±š—²š—暝˜€ š˜š—暝—®š—°š—ø š—¶š—» š˜š—µš—² š—³š—¶š—暝˜€š˜ š—½š—¹š—®š—°š—²? It is their reason to exist. People shorten the urls to track how often that url was opened, by whom, from which countries,.... This can be interesting data for someone sharing a link, but it affects you privacy and I think that should not be that way. ā© š—›š—¼š˜„ š—°š—®š—» š—œ š—Æš—² š˜€š˜‚š—暝—² š˜š—µš—®š˜ š˜‚š—»š˜€š—µš—¼š—暝˜.š—¹š—¶š—»š—ø š—±š—¼š—²š˜€ š—»š—¼š˜ š˜š—暝—®š—°š—ø š—ŗš—²? To be 100% honest, you can't. There is no technical solution which could help me to show you that I am not tracking you. I have no interest in tracking you! But if you are really skeptical you can host the unshort service yourself. It is GPLv3 and can be found on https://github.com/simonfrey/uns... You than can configure the Firefox & Chrome extension to use your server instead of mine and than you are sure no one apart from yourself tracks you. Keep in mind that the service works as proxy and a proxy is more secure if a lot of people use it. So invite your friends to your self hosted server and you should be good.
An
Interesting approach! The fact that URL Shortening services collect EVERYTHING about their visitors was the reason I made shrtco.de - It's still the only URL Shortner (I can find) which doesn't track anything about its visitors. Maybe you can give it a try and tell me what you think! :)
simon_frey_eu
Maker
@anthemaker I know about your service and like it, but still the problem here is that there is IMO no user for shortlinks apart from tracking. Maybe you do not track now, but do that in the future. This is what unshort.link tries to prevent. Personally I like and follow your work (Twitter :D) and think you are doing awesome work. But still I think that using shortlinks is a bad idea after all.
An
@eu_frey First of all: thanks for the nice words! Second, I think that there is another use for Short URL services apart from tracking. In the beginning of URL Shorteners, they were solely used to make long links shorter so you could post them to services like Twitter where characters mattered and to be able to use them in the offline world (print media, remembering links, posters, ads, ...) After that, services like bitly became popular because they track everything about the short-link visitors and provide this data to the creator of the links. There currently is no URL Shortener that just focuses on shortening links like in the "old days" and not collecting data. That's the reason I made shrtco.de and there are many users who come just because of this (currently we create about 16 thousend new links each and every day)
Rahul Jain
Wow.. Privacy is becoming a trend. 2020.. may be more privacy focus app will appear.. Hope ads will not be shown while we unshortlink.
simon_frey_eu
Maker
@rahulgemawath Currently it is easy for me to finance the service out of my own pocket. If it grows bigger there might be some way of getting money for the infra. Ads could be a way, but as it is oposed to what the users of unshort.link like I consider it to be one of the last options.