Photo of Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

Terence Eden’s Blog

The Perils of URL Shortners

· 2 comments · 200 words · read ~726 times.

I'm not a big fan of URL shortners - bit.ly, t.co, goo.gl, ow.ly, etc - I understand the need for them, but they seem to offer a fairly poor service in terms of privacy and usefulness. Take this recent example from Vodafone. Aside from the obvious downsides (user doesn't know where the link will take them, if it's compatible, link looks like gobbledegook, etc) there is a rather more interesting issue. Goo.gl - along with many other URL shortners - give everyone access to your statistics. …

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TSA's QR Statistics

· 250 words · read ~403 times.

The TSA have come under fire for many things. Most recently, Fred Trotter has called them out for using a "dummy" QR code which leads to a page the TSA don't control. An astonishingly lax approach to QR use. Last year, I noticed this QR code as I passed through San Francisco Airport. The code goes to a TSA site (albeit non-mobile), which is odd, as the TSA do have a capable mobile site. What I find most curious is that the TSA are using the Goo.gl URL shortener. This is a bad idea for two…

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