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Wednesday, October 6, 2010

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URLXray: X-ray vision for short-urls for Twitter

Posted: 06 Oct 2010 08:50 AM PDT

Many Twitter users had to deal with onMouseOver issue with Twitter. This was created because of a security vulnerability on Twitter. That vulnerability has been fixed for now but one of the most basic vulnerable part of Twitter are the short URL's. The reason is mainly that we do not know where we are being directed. This makes it a little dangerous.

URLXray is a nice online tool to quick look up a short URL and display the complete URL. This usually is very useful if you are using Twitter through the browser and not a desktop application.

Features of URLXray

Just enter the short url in and click on X Ray button. This shows the original URL where you are being directed.
Visiting the URLXray website every time to unravel a short-url is not really practical. This is why URLXray has a nice clean bookmarklet which works with most browsers out there.
I liked URLXray because it has a simple and clean interface. Also it has a bookmarlet and add-on or extension which works with one browser only.

I use Twitter and Facebook extensively. As a blogger I do end up clicking on a lot of short-urls. I do not recommend looking at all the links with URLXray but only the tweets or updates which are suspect. This is usually when there is a generic message or no message accompanying the short-url.

Do you know about similar web tools that unravel where a short-url takes you? Do drop in your comments with your views.

Links: URLXRay website | URLXray Bookmarklet

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