Everyone seems to want in on URL shortening, as it’s a neat way to share links and great for Twitter’s 140 character limit. McAfee has launched a beta URL shortening service of their own, apparently to calm nervous users who are worried about dangerous shortened links.
The McAf.ee shortened links apparently use ‘Global Threat Intelligence to protect you‘, and open the link with a special frame informing you the site is safe. It’s not pretty! It also offers none of the interesting statistics that services such as Bit.ly do, and it’s hard to see why McAfee’s attempt might be a success.
We would suggest that the best way to avoid malicious URLs and websites is to only click links from reliable sources. Most scam tweets, emails and Facebook status updates aren’t very sophisticated after all!
