PSA Shortlinks and steemit. Think before you click

As some of you know I do a lot of searching for abuse (plagiarism, spam, etc) on steemit. Something I have noticed in the last few months is the increase in the use of link shorting services. Keep in mind when you see short links that there is no real reason for their use. You can just put the link here or if it's too long for your liking markup gives you a simple way to make the clickable part say whatever you want.

So why would people use link shorting services? Well of course there is the simple reason of doing it out of habit. In most cases where I see them it is to hide something though. That could be something as simple as a harmless referral link. On the other hand it could just as well be a virus or malware link. There are also many url shorting services that pay people to use them. These sites are usually loaded with ads and malware links. You click on one of these short links you better be doing virus scans right after. So someone is getting paid fractions of a cent to infect peoples computers. Do you really want to even read articles from someone that would do that? If they are scamming that way then there is a good chance what that posted is a scam or stolen as well.

So if you are posting try not to use url shorting services. They are unnecessary. If you are reading something that has short links think what is this person trying to hide. Steem and SBD are money. Concurrency is money. Scammers will be everywhere trying to get your money.