[kwlug-disc] Link shortener advice

[Jason Eckert]

I avoid link shorteners altogether. Instead, I ensure that the description
text is hyperlinked to the full URL so that the reader doesn't see the full
URL unless they hover over the hyperlink. Of course for email, this
requires it be in HTML format instead of plaintext.  In the few cases where
plaintext is a must, I use footnotes (e.g. see Link#1 below and put
Link#1:hyperlink) at the bottom of the message.

On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 5:34 PM Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc <
kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:

> I am running into link shortener issues again. In fact, the link
> shortener issues never really went away.
>
> I have been using da.gd, which is open source but gets flagged by a
> bunch of mail scanning systems because spammers can make those links
> easily.
>
> I think I probably have to go with one of the gross big players like
> bit.ly, because it is big enough that the spam filters will not block
> it automatically. (But every bit.ly link will probably increase the
> spam score of a message.) There are also big link rot issues here.
>
> I am thinking of self-hosting an open source link shortener, but there
> are dozens out there and most of them look like security nightmares
> (in the sense that I do not know whether they address security issues
> at all, and they are mostly written in PHP). Some popular ones are:
>
> https://lessnmore.net/
> https://project.polr.me/
> https://yourls.org/
> https://shlink.io/
>
> but there are a tonne of other ones. I have not evaluated any in depth
> yet, and I am sufficiently time-crunched these days that doing so is
> feeling overwhelming.
>
> Here are the features I want:
>
> - Easy to install if I have my own domain
> - Cares about security
> - Ideally, minimal functionality. I need:
>   + The ability to shorten a URL
>   + The ability to take a shortened URL and expand it
>   + Some kind of API or password protection so that arbitrary spammers
>   cannot use the service
>   + The ability to call an API from my Python scripts
>
> Most of these shorteners want to do a bunch of surveillance and custom
> URLs and other toolkit things (da.gd is a good example of this. It is
> kind of neat, but I worry about allowing all that functionality). I do
> not really care whether the shortener wants to do surveillance
> provided that I do not need to look at them.
>
> Here are my questions:
>
> - Does anybody have a particular open source self-hosted solution to
>   recommend?
> - Does anybody have guidance on which way I should go, and what the
>   best practices would be? This is for KWLUG and Watcamp, so I do not
>   want to pay for a monthly service. (Surprise, surprise.) But I also
>   want my emails to get through and people to be able to click links.
>
>
>
>
> - Paul
>
>
> --
> Events: https://feeds.off-topic.kwlug.org
> Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org
>
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