Use TinyURL links with care

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: M. E. KABAY ON SECURITY
07/26/05
Today's focus: Use TinyURL links with care

Dear security.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* TinyURL links could be single point of failure
* Links related to Security
* Featured reader resource
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Fluke Networks
Download the Special Report: VoIP: Challenges, Drivers, Hurdles,
and Recommendation

VoIP, poses many questions, among them; vendors vs. carriers,
end-user adoption, management complexity, etc. Once these
questions are answered then the benefits of convergence can be
realized. Through research the following special report VoIP:
Challenges, Drivers, Hurdles, and Recommendation analyzes the
questions and the best practices behind implementing a converged
network.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=108860
_______________________________________________________________
CYBERSLACKING - IT COSTS

To the tune of $178 billion annually, according to a recent
study. Employees, at work, are reading the news, checking
personal e-mail, conducting online banking, travel and shopping
more than you might realize. How much time? Click here for more:

http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=108708
_______________________________________________________________

Today's focus: Use TinyURL links with care

By M. E. Kabay

Many of you have no doubt noticed URLs that look like this:
<http://tinyurl.com/8fnjr> If you click on this particular URL,
you will end up at my opinion page, which has the URL
<http://www2.norwich.edu/mkabay/opinion/index.htm>

The abbreviation of long URLs (for example, I recently condensed
a 232-character URL into 24 characters) is performed by a
program running on a server at <http://tinyurl.com/create.php>
When a user links to a TinyURL, the TinyURL server redirects the
request to the original URL.

TinyURLs are useful whenever a long URL doesn't fit into a
limited line length. E-mail messages, for example, often break
long URLs into multiple lines; so does the digital signature
function of PGP software. Such broken URLs may not work at all
with direct clicking or when copied and pasted into a browser
address window, especially if the introduced line breaks consist
of real carriage-return line-feed characters rather than simply
being attributes of the display format (wrap lines).

Condensed URLs also temporarily conceal the ultimate destination
of a link; I suppose that someone might use TinyURLs in spam or
in phishing messages to trick victims into going to unsavory
sites, but the terms of service do state that such abuse "will
be reported to all ISPs involved and to the proper governmental
agencies."

Much more important for Webmasters and writers, however, is that
TinyURLs introduce a single point of failure for what the site
claims are "more than 8.5 million" URLs used in "over 185
million hits/month." Although anyone can have broken links on a
Web page, it would be unusual for all of the links to fail if
they pointed to different Web sites. However, if all the links
on a page were converted to TinyURLs and the TinyURL server went
down or were permanently withdrawn, all of those links would be
dead.

I do occasionally use TinyURLs to replace unwieldy URLs in my
bibliographies, but I never put them on my Web site and when I
do use them in a reference, I include bibliographic information
that will allow readers to find the original article or Web page
directly. Such precautions are in no way a criticism of the
TinyURL folks, just a bit of prevention to avoid trouble.

I thank the organizers of TinyURL for a useful service and wish
them a long and productive career.

I also hope they have really good business-continuity and
disaster-recovery plans.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. Verizon joins managed security game
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlsec3757>

2. Future-proof your network
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlsecuritynewsal3482>

3. VoIP security threats: Fact or fiction?
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlsec3758>

4. The ROI of VoIP
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlsecuritynewsal3323>

5. Appliances replace DNS, DHCP software
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlsecuritynewsal3483>

Today's most forwarded story:

Verizon joins managed security game
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlsec3759>
_______________________________________________________________
To contact: M. E. Kabay

M. E. Kabay, Ph.D., CISSP, is Associate Professor in the
Division of Business and Management at Norwich University in
Northfield, Vt. Mich can be reached by e-mail
<mailto:mkabay@norwich.edu> and his Web site
<http://www2.norwich.edu/mkabay/index.htm>.

A Master's degree in the management of information assurance in
18 months of study online from a real university - see
<http://www.msia.norwich.edu/>
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Fluke Networks
Download the Special Report: VoIP: Challenges, Drivers, Hurdles,
and Recommendation

VoIP, poses many questions, among them; vendors vs. carriers,
end-user adoption, management complexity, etc. Once these
questions are answered then the benefits of convergence can be
realized. Through research the following special report VoIP:
Challenges, Drivers, Hurdles, and Recommendation analyzes the
questions and the best practices behind implementing a converged
network.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=108859
_______________________________________________________________
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We've got our eyes on you. Keeping the customer in view.

Watch this webcast for a look at the challenges of ensuring a
consistent, coherent customer view across the enterprise as well
as receive expert advice on how to implement an effective
customer data management plan.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=108775
_______________________________________________________________
FEATURED READER RESOURCE
THE NEW DATA CENTER: SPOTLIGHT ON STORAGE

This Network World report takes a look at storage trends such as
virtualization, encryption and archiving. Here you will also
find seven tips for managing storage in the new data center, how
storage encryption can help ease the threat of identity theft,
why one exec believes its all about the information and more.
Click here:
<http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2005/ndc4/>
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