Update 2022: This URL shortening service by Mcafee no longer exists. Try one of these websites instead.
McAfee has launched a URL shortening service: Mcaf.ee. This is a new addition to the growing list of URL shortening services like j.mp, bit.ly, and more. The biggest advantage of McAfee URL shortening service is that it prevents users from creating short URLs of malicious sites, or javascript code. This feature was something that I had been looking for since a long time.
To test McAfee’s URL shortening service, I decided to try to fool it. I first shortened a URL using bit.ly, and then tried to shorten that bit.ly URL using Mcafee. As expected, I got a message that I cannot shorten URLs that are already shortened by another URL shortening service.
I still decided to push it further. So, I shortened a URL this time with j.mp, instead of bit.ly (j.mp is just another incarnation of bit.ly, but not very popular). Surprisingly, Mcafee did let me shorten that URL! This is not what I expected (or wanted).
However, I think this is just because Mcafee’s URL shortening service is so new, and they might be still working on adding features. I hope they put some sort of automatic check to see if the URL is being redirected somewhere else, and prevent shortening that further.
Nevertheless, this is a first big step towards getting rid of all those spammers that push unwanted and malicious links via URL shorteners. Thank Mcafee!
Also read: shorten email address, and password protect URL.
