plugins to lengthen short urls for security purposes

Question

What browser plugins can help us to see the actual destination of such shortened URLs?

score 8 · Accepted Answer · edited May 29 '12 at 12:56

8

I prefer a different Firefox add-on called RequestPolicy. It's a much more general purpose security tool in that it enables you to control all requests to external URLs. Along the way it converts shortened URLs to the real URL and let's you decide if you want to go there.

It exposes all the external links of a web page and let's you decide which to allow.

At first you might find RequestPolicy annoying because many sites won't function as you would expect until you allow external links. Now that I am used to it, I like it a lot.

edited May 29 '12 at 12:56

Scott Pack

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answered Feb 27 '11 at 18:08

Bill Frank

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Hadn't seen it before. I like it! – Rory Alsop Feb 27 '11 at 18:59
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Yes, but make sure you use the latest beta version. There is a security hole detailed here: https://grepular.com/Bypassing_RequestPolicy_Using_Protocol_Relative_URLs – mrnap Feb 28 '11 at 04:21
I am a fan of Chrome, so is there a bookmarklet for this? – Kim Stacks Mar 01 '11 at 01:47
I asked the wrong question. I should have asked if there is a plugin for this in Chrome. This one is more of a general purpose security tool which I think its better than just LongURL. So i will mark this as an answer. – Kim Stacks Mar 03 '11 at 12:49

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 27 '11 at 13:46

Use LongURL

If you are using Firefox, install the add-on for this.

For other browsers, copy the bookmarket and put it in your bookmark bar.

One thing to note, if you are surfing a https page, the LongURL would not work as the page would be encrypted.

Copy paste the shortened url into a textbox in a http page and use the LongURL there.

plugins to lengthen short urls for security purposes

2 Answers2