Anyone who has ever tried to e-mail or write down a long, complicated
URL (Web address) knows how difficult it can be. Many times, URLs are too
long to fit on a single line, and some e-mail programs will turn a
one-line correct address into a two-line unusable one. Long URLs are also
difficult to speak and remember, adding to the problems.
In response to this issue, individuals and companies have created a
number of services, including TinyURL.com, Shorl.com, and notlong.com, to
turn overly long URLs into short ones. The user types in a short URL
pointing at the service. The service automatically looks into a database,
finds the longer URL, and causes the page corresponding to the longer
address to be loaded into the user's browser. This process is meant to be
not only easy but invisible to the user, and essentially instantaneous as
well. Even better, most of these URL-shortening services are free to use.
Given the incredible convenience the URL-shortening services provide,
why shouldn't every site owner and newsletter publisher use them as a
matter of course? In short, because there are some risks, some
significant, as well. The first major risk is reliability: if the
shortening service should experience technical problems, or be shut down
entirely, all the links to the service, including those that users may
have noted in the past, will stop working. Worse still, a siteowner may
not even be aware that the short URLs pointing to the site aren't
functioning unless it notices a sharp decrease in traffic, as people try
to reach the site using a short URL and fail. Remarkably, there are many
businesses (especially e-mail publishers) that rely heavily on TinyURL and
its competitors, without any sort of uptime guarantee or contract with the
service.
There is a more subtle risk: even if the services are working, their
operators can change the underlying links. Consider a situation where the
long URL includes information that generate payments, as with affiliate
programs. It is trivial for the URL service to change every such reference
in its database to redirect the payments to the service itself. Again,
neither the party whose links were changed nor the destination site owner
will ever be aware of the change. This is not just speculation: while the
URL services have not been reported to be doing this, some software
vendors have: Gator and other "ad replacement software" publishers have
been sued for distributing programs that actually change underlying
addresses to capture affiliate commissions. Even outside the affiliate
context, there is still the possibility that, by design or mistake, the
URL services may change their database entries to alter the underlying
addresses to which users are sent.
URL services also raise potential privacy issues, because they can
collect a sizable amount of information about the users who type in their
shortened addresses. Although the services will not know the actual
identities of those users, the services can collect information including
the sites from which the users have come (otherwise known as referrers),
the sites to which they go, and the ISPs from which they come. The
services may be able to use cookies to track users across sites, albeit
anonymously, to put together behavior profiles.
This type of information has value, and in fact Web sites and even
advertising servers such as DoubleClick resell this type of demographic
data every day. Unlike DoubleClick, though, TinyURL (as one example) does
not even have a privacy policy on its site, so there is no way of knowing
what information is being collected by TinyURL, or what it is doing with
the information it has. Customers may complain when their data are
harvested by the URL services, and the use by a siteowner of a URL service
that collects information may even violate the site's own privacy policy.
How can siteowners and newsletter publishers take advantage of URL
services, given all the potential problems? The most reliable approach is
an in-house solution, running URL shortening on one's own Web server and
managing the redirection via an internal database. This ensures that short
URLs are and remain functional and accurate.
Many siteowners and list publishers, though, don't have the resources
available to do URL shortening themselves. For those organizations, it's
important that if they do use a third-party service, they do so with eyes
open. If the need justifies it (that is, if there is significant financial
investment at stake), it's preferable to get a contract with a commercial
URL service. This, though, will likely require more time and money,
including service fees, and may even bring lawyers into the picture. Even
if the site or listowner does not wish to go to the trouble or expense of
a contract, it should ask these questions of any URL service provider it
wishes to use:
How long has the URL service been in operation?
Is this a volunteer or commercially-supported operation?
Is there a published privacy policy? If so, what does it say about
how information is collected and used?
If there is not a published privacy policy, what does the URL
service provider say in response to questions about its information
collection, use and sharing provisions?
Is there a written commitment by the URL service not to change the
underlying URLs to which its short versions point?
How long will short URLs remain live? Do they expire, or will they
work as long as the URL service is working?
Who else uses the service? What has their experience been?
In the end, effective use of short URLs to tame unwieldy Web addresses
requires appropriate due diligence, technical review and possibly a
contract or two, By identifying and addressing the real concerns over
reliability and privacy set out above, both users and publishers can take
full advantage of the utility and convenience of short URLs.
Jonathan I. Ezor is
an attorney and author who is an Associate Professor of Law and Technology and
the Director of the Institute
for Business, Law & Technology at Touro Law Center in Huntington, NY. He is
the author of Clicking Through: A Survival Guide for Bringing Your Company
Online (Bloomberg Press 2000), co-author of Producing Web Hits (IDG Books
1997), and many articles. Read the BizLawTech Blog at
http://iblt.tourolaw.edu/blog.
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