How To Filter URL Shortener?


How To Filter URL Shortener?

Introduction

URL Shortener is the best way to get a short url for sharing any link online. There lots of popular sites like bitly , goo.gl etc gives you access to shorten your site’s/blog’s URL or any content with a very small size.

They provide statistics also about how many visits that particular shortened url receives in a day, week, month and year . By using this service we can create an easy redirect to our real link in case of security reasons or other things.

How to Filter URL Shortener

If you think that a particular website is harmful for your computer, then there is a chance to block the site. For this purpose we must install a good URL filtering software on our computer . With the help of this program you can block or allow sites by using different filter options which you have set up with .

Now it’s time to know how to filter url shortener step by step :

1. First of all we must download and install any good URL filtering software on our computer. I recommend you to use Comodo’s Internet Security (CIS) .

2. After installing this software, open it and click on the “Firewall” tab in the left pane.

3. Go to the section which says “URL Filtering”. Here you will see different pre-defined filter categories like Pornography , Phishing etc .

4. Now you can easily add a particular site url in a particular category by clicking on the PLUS SIGN (+) on its right side . You can even create your own custom filter category if necessary .

5. Now go back and look at the main page of CIS interface, enter the browser’ URL in the field given at the top .

6. If you want to block this website, then select one of the filtering categories given there and move it to the active filters pane by clicking on its arrow . Now your site is blocked.

7. On the other hand if you want to access/allow a website, simply remove it from the active filters pane or completely disable url filtering for a particular browser session .

Using Htaccess Code:

For security reasons if you want to filter content with url shorteners for your blog or website then it’s easy by using htaccess code because htaccess can track the short url request and redirect it back after filtering.

You just need to write some easy .htaccess code under root directory of your site’s/blog’s which is given below:

RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)\.(.*)$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.longurl-website.com/$1 [R=301,L] 1 2 3 4 5 RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond % { REQUEST_URI } ^ ( . * ) \ . ( . * ) $ [ NC ] RewriteRule ^ ( . * ) $ https : //www.longurl-website.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Now your all short url request will redirect to our long url website given in above htaccess code with 301 permanent redirection which is a secure way to track short urls and filter them. Please note you can also use htaccess code like mod_rewrite to filter this but it requires some extra configuration of your server which is not recommended because if anything goes wrong then it’s hard to find the reason so I prefer to use htaccess instead of mod rewrite.

Using Browser:

As is the case with any other website, URL Shortener might be used by spammers or hackers to spread viruses, malwares or backdoor links. To avoid such problems we need to filter URL shortener sites while we visit them.

Filtering the URL shortener site will not only protect us from harming content but also protect our browsing history. This method can be applied in any browser. You just need to follow the following simple steps:

Step 1  – Open your browser and type www.google.com .

Step 2  – Search for “block” in the search bar and click on the block link .

Step 3 – Enter the url shortener website in the blocked site section and enable the ‘never allow’ option so that it cannot access your browser again .

Step 4  – Lastly, click on block and it’s done! You can now visit the shortener site without any problem.

Conclusion

Shortening a URL with a URL Shortener is very helpful, especially on Twitter where the character limit is 140 . But it’s easy to identify spam or harmful links from long URLs.

So this was all about how to filter URL shorteners step by step . I hope you have got a basic idea about how to install a filtering program and how to block/unblock sites easily without any trouble. You can even create your own filter rules according to your need for maximum customization .

You can use URL Shortener for Unique URLs of Social Media, News, Archive etc., purposes only without using it for spamming or publishing malicious links on the web.

Now you don’t need to use encryption software which only encrypts the url but not the content because filtered site means encrypted content so save your time too.

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