A url shortening service (according to Wikipedia) makes a web page available under a very short URL in addition to the original address. A short URL obscures the target address and, supposedly, only “forwards” the request to the final page.
For the fun and the test, I’ve compiled a sequence of short urls that target each other in an infinite loop. The first one points to the second, which in turn points to the tird and so on… The last one points to the first one.
Here is the list: (Because it’s a loop, there is no beginning or end. Just click on any of those to start.)
… > http://tiny.cc/e2ecr > http://moourl.com/hcs02 > http://tinyurl.com/2uzekj9 > http://goo.gl/1RIU > http://cli.gs/gejWZt > http://is.gd/bYNWw > http://ow.ly/1IhhO > http://u.nu/5hra9 > http://i5.be/aNqaNp > http://ur1.ca/zhsx > http://bit.ly/dni4je > http://shrinkurl.us/ndH > http://short.ie/1HZ7p9q > …
Notes:
– You can actually watch the process of redirection in your brower’s status bar.
– Your browser will stop the process and redirect you to an error page when it will detect that it is loading the same url too many times.
Update:
– (2010-06-22) Because http://cli.gs has stopped his service, this loop has stopped working.
– (2010-06-23) Mmh… In fact, Cli.gs hasn’t disappeared. Even if yesterday, it was off when I checked. Now it is redirecting to a preview page (for security reasons). Which in fact is a proof to me that url shortening services are not trust worthy 🙂