Mayayana
| >that link is *not* the same as the above, which is *exactly* why | >tinyurl is *bad* and should never be used, as it doesn't necessarily go | >to where the user says it does. | > | In at least the last ten years I have never had that happen, nor have I | heard a complaint about a link I posted, although i use it quite often/

I generally ignore those links. They're a bad idea that never really served any purpose. There's no reason not to post the full link. It's just as easy to copy/paste 3 lines as it is to copy/paste one short line.

And all sorts of things could hide in a link. It may go to the wrong place. It may track you. It may add a 3rd-party tracker. For instance, a media site could provide short links "for convenience" and send people invisibly to a site that tracks and then loads the true destination. Malware could even be installed that way. You could end up being sent to a site in Russia or China on your way to your destination and never see any indication that it happened.

(Google actually tracks all visitors by sending clicks through their own server first. They started doing that a couple of years ago. They *sort of* don't hide it, but it's a kind of open secret. One can see it if one hovers over the link and has a status bar, but most people don't know enough to notice. That's exactly what a shortened link can do.)