Capi’s Corner

To emphasize my demurs against URL shortening services which I have mentioned before, here comes the prove that my thesis is correct: the URL shortening service tr.im is going to be shut down by end of this year. As Robert Scoble put it, this is a “shortcoming” of the Twitter platform, where the shutdown most likely will be felt most.

This is the first time I am aware of actual knowledge/data-loss which will occur due to the shutdown of such a service.

Update: tr.im announced that they will stay in business, due to an overwhelming response. But still, the final shutdown of such a service sooner or latter can and will happen. And even worse would be the continuation of such a service where all the URLs would be redirected somewhere else…

advocacy, internet advocacy, internet, url-shortening

I have already written about my opinion about the problems of URL shortening back in 2005. Yesterday, Jeff Atwood pointed out other issues like commercialization. Today, another threat has come true: hackers have manipulated the URLs of shortening service cli.gs.

Given the huge amount of information hidden behind such shortened URLs, and given the popularity and number of these links, especially nowadays on Twitter, these services could see themselves being under permanent siege of hackers/crackers. Being able to manipulate hundred of thousands if not even more vastly distributed and popular URLs to point to a given site could be used for both, generating (lots of?) ad-revenue, or as a new form of DDoS-attack.

At the moment there seems to be no way around using these services (especially with services like Twitter), but in the medium/long run a solution has to be found if we don’t want to lose lots of valuable information.

advocacy, internet advocacy, hacking, internet, security, url-shortening

If you speak German and you have about an hour of time, you should watch the video of the presentation of Uwe Vetter at the 23C3 on house searches and how to deal with the police in such situation, especially if “you have nothing to hide”.

Uwe Vetter is the author of the law blog, a well-recognized blog on German law and justice. He is lawyer and has been blogging for several years now.

The video is really entertaining and informative with a lot of nice information and background stories about a situation I hope I’ll never face. It covers the situation in Germany, but I expect that many of the advises given also apply to Austria and other countries.

advocacy law, video