Generating a shortened URL to share content may seem like a good idea, but it may also expose you to unnecessary security risks, a new research paper shows. Titled Gone in Six Characters: Short URLs Considered Harmful for Cloud Services, it explains how short URLs can be used by malicious players to plant malware, copy personal files, and retrieve all sorts of personal information, like your home address, among other things. URL shorteners, as their name suggest, are meant to bring long links, that can contain dozens of characters, usually down to just a few letters and numbers. That has…
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