My New Recruits

  • Thread starter Thread starter Al Sparber
  • Start date Start date
J. P. Gilliver (John) said:
I've been assuming this is spam, but out of curiosity wondered what was hidden behind the goo.gl address. I wondered
if goo.gl worked backwards (I wasn't going to just click on it and give the spammer an extra hit), so I tried it - and
it gives "There was an internal error. Please refresh."!

Anyone know how to find what a goo.gl address actually is, without actually going to it? (And possibly the same
question for tinyurl and other such.)
Click to expand...

If you use tinyurl, you can enable Preview mode, and then when you click on a tinyurl link, it will take you to the
tinyurl page, show you where the full url is pointing, and give you the option of going thee or not. That way, you're
not giving the target site a hit, unless you want to.
 
| Anyone know how to find what a goo.gl address actually is, without
| actually going to it? (And possibly the same question for tinyurl and
| other such.)

That's an interesting question, but it's stored in a
commercial database, so I can't imagine any method
other than what David Lipman has suggested.

I guess I take the stubborn approach: If someone
can't spare a minute to send me a real URL, *and*
explain to me why they sent it, then it can't be very
important, so I just ignore it. There are very few people
for whom I would click a link just on their say-so that
"you gotta see this one!!". And probably all of those
people are under 14. Anyone older should have better
manners. :)
 
David H. said:
From: "J. P. Gilliver (John) said:
In message <[email protected]>, David H.
From: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <[email protected]>
[]
Ah. I was wanting to avoid actually sending any request, or
communicating in any way with the site.
[]
So you communicate withy the site. Its safe. I use WGET all the time
[]
Yes, but I'm still giving it a hit.
Click to expand...

So ??

Hit it with a Proxy.
Click to expand...
How does that not give it a hit?
Click to expand...

It might help if you explain exactly what you're trying to accomplish
and what you're trying to avoid. You've already been given a couple of
ways of peeking at the site's information without personal risk, so it
appears that you're trying to accomplish something else.
 
Char Jackson said:
In message <[email protected]>, David H.
From: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <[email protected]>

In message <[email protected]>, David H.
From: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <[email protected]>
[]
Ah. I was wanting to avoid actually sending any request, or
communicating in any way with the site.
[]
So you communicate withy the site. Its safe. I use WGET all the time
[]
Yes, but I'm still giving it a hit.

So ??

Hit it with a Proxy.



How does that not give it a hit?
Click to expand...

It might help if you explain exactly what you're trying to accomplish
and what you're trying to avoid. You've already been given a couple of
ways of peeking at the site's information without personal risk, so it
appears that you're trying to accomplish something else.
Click to expand...
I'd hoped it was obvious. Yes, proxying and using text-only browsers
give safety from malware; however, if there is any sort of hit counter
checking the effectiveness of the spam method (especially if there is
any payment involved), then either of those methods still increment the
hit counter, thus making the original spamming method appear to be
working, thus increasing (however microscopically) the spammer's
likelihood of using that method of spamming again.
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks. I don't know how to retrieve data from a web server
without the retrieval being recorded in the server logs or the hit
counter, if it exists. That level of hacking is above my pay grade.
 
Ok, thanks. I don't know how to retrieve data from a web server
without the retrieval being recorded in the server logs or the hit
counter, if it exists. That level of hacking is above my pay
grade.
Click to expand...

You can't, unless you have access to the server's file system. What Mr.
Gilliver wants is impossible.

I don't know why he thinks one hit on the server is going to make any
significant difference, but there it is.
 
You can't, unless you have access to the server's file system. What Mr.
Gilliver wants is impossible.

I don't know why he thinks one hit on the server is going to make any
significant difference, but there it is.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Nil. I'm of the same mind.
 
From: "J. P. Gilliver (John) said:
I was just wondering if there's a way of reversing a goo.gl short address to see what it
points to. Someone posted a way for tinyurl ones (that didn't involve going to the page
itself).
But you never know. It might be the only hit, in which case it will tick the box to say
"that spam method worked: someone went to the site. So I'll use that spam method again."
Click to expand...

That's dumb.

How about this sceneraio...

User posts spam to Usenet 100 times using shortened URL. Shortenend URL gets canceled as
spam.
Those 100 spam posts got short-circuited as the URL redirecting to the spam content web
site no longer works.
 
On Sun, 18 Mar 2012 10:45:46 -0500, in
| Anyone know how to find what a goo.gl address actually is, without
| actually going to it? (And possibly the same question for tinyurl and
| other such.)

That's an interesting question, but it's stored in a
commercial database, so I can't imagine any method
other than what David Lipman has suggested.

I guess I take the stubborn approach: If someone
can't spare a minute to send me a real URL, *and*
explain to me why they sent it, then it can't be very
important, so I just ignore it. There are very few people
for whom I would click a link just on their say-so that
"you gotta see this one!!". And probably all of those
people are under 14. Anyone older should have better
manners. :)
Click to expand...

Often people use 'tinyurl' or similar because some newsreaders will break
a link -- either natively or depending on how word wrap is set.

When i was more involved with usenet, i would post the "real" foot long
link followed by "or:" and a tinyurl of the same thing.

I agree with your editorial comment. The best way to be sure that i don't
click a link is to precede it with "you gotta see this" or similar
wording.

jim
 
| But you never know. It might be the only hit, in which case it will tick
| the box to say "that spam method worked: someone went to the site. So
| I'll use that spam method again."

I agree with you, but I'm not sure your approach
will work.

The first problem is that, other than safety
issues, what does the URL really tell you about the
webpage? In other words, if the URL is not clearly
deceptive when you get it decoded then you haven't
learned anything.

Second is simply...why bother? Someone posts a
mysterious link with an abusive tone and no explanation...
Why waste time with it at all? Just to see how nasty
it is? (I have to admit, there's an aspect of human
nature that can find that very compelling. :)

The third issue is that anyone trying to get visitors
in order to show ads, plant malware, etc., can benefit
from just about any activity. If Google had a site you
could use to decrypt their short URLs they might very
well count that action as a hit. It certainly shows that
someone is interested. I get website visitors all the time
from Russia that visit my site with forged referrers pointing
to their domains. The idea is that if I use an online stat
counter service for my website then they may be able to
get their URL onto someone else's webpage (my stats page)
just by visiting my site. Then Google might count that as
a link back to their site. Scamming search engines is a
complex business. It's hard to foresee all the possible tricks.
 
| Often people use 'tinyurl' or similar because some newsreaders will break
| a link -- either natively or depending on how word wrap is set.
|

Yes. I can see the logic in some cases. But I can't
agree with it. It breaks the whole functionality of the
Internet. I guess the main reason that short URLs get
used is because most people don't understand the
structure of a URL in the first place. But I worry that
short URLs could become popular, which would add a
layer of obscurity to the Web. So I take a "pro-active"
approach.

.....Which is not even touching on spying issues. The
more people convert URLs to Google URLs, the more
Google gets to track movements that have nothing
to do with them. I assume these "tiny url" operations
must have some kind of business model.
 
I was just wondering if there's a way of reversing a goo.gl short
address to see what it points to. Someone posted a way for tinyurl
ones (that didn't involve going to the page itself).
Click to expand...

OK, I guess I misunderstood what you were looking for.
But you never know. It might be the only hit, in which case it
will tick the box to say "that spam method worked: someone went to
the site. So I'll use that spam method again."
Click to expand...

I don't think one hit is going to make any difference. Search engines
methodically hit most web pages in the world. An effective spammer
would have to interpret their hit statistics to know if their spam was
effective or not.

I'm more concerned about whether a link goes to someplace malicious. If
I something seems hinky, I'll use the text-mode browser Lynx to view
it.
 
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