I love Twitter but I’ve become increasingly worried about the links that people send in their tweets. Most commonly, tweets contain a link that has been shortened using a service like bit.ly, which makes it possible to squeeze it into a tweet, but leaves the reader unable to tell where the link really goes. It is a huge leap of faith to click on that link, even if you are confident that the originator is trustworthy.

Twitter has had instances of accounts being hacked, so clearly there is a real possibility that you could get a tweet with a link that leads you to some kind of malicious site or undesirable content. 

By now, most of us know not to open email attachments from unknown or questionable sources and to be wary of clicking links in emails if we are uncertain where they lead. But lets face it, that doesn’t stop most people from clicking on things they should otherwise ignore or delete.

Personally, I mostly access Twitter from my android phone (HTC 2), so I am probe to simply clicking a link whenever I see one I want to explore. I know the risks and I try to be smart about it, but I know I am walking a dangerous line clicking on those links. 

I have heard there are sites that can decipher the shortened links and I know there are add-on’s for various browsers, but those don’t help much for those of us who use smart phones to access Twitter. 

Of course this issue brings up a great opportunity for someone to devise a clever and easy solution to help folks know where a shortened link goes before they click on it. I wish I had the technical skills (and time) to come up with a solution.