URL shortening services have ben around for a few years now, their original purpose was to prevent long and cubersome URLs from broken by poor email clients that for some unknown reason decided they should impose a line break on anything over a certain length. Well this is 2009, we have hover boards and flying cars, and email clients that work so why the sudden explosion in the number of shortening services?
The answer of course is the new social networking phenomenon that is twitter, and the 147 tweet limit that means that each character is worth its wait in gold, resulting in shorter and shorter URLs. The only problem is that short URLs hide where a link will take you, this can be anything from annoying (a huge potential for Rick Rolling) or more seriously, quite a serious problem, as the link could potentially take you to a malicious or offensive website.
As you can't trust the link, you are forced to trust the user, but sometimes this isn't possible, ExpandMyURL.com adds transparency to the process, revealing where the short link ends up, making sure that there are no nasty surprises waiting for you at your link's destination.
We check the URL's from over thirty different URL shortening services, including the three most popular: tinyurl.com, bit.ly and is.gd examining where they go, lengthening and inspecting them so you don't have to.