(C) BoingBoing This story was originally published by BoingBoing and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A URL shortener that creates suspicious-looking URLs [1] ['Rob Beschizza'] Date: 2025-09-19 Want to upset your workplace or school's IT department? Want to trip automated systems? Phishy URL is a perverse URL shortener-type service that creates eminently shady URLs packed with malware keywords and linking via domains such as cam-xxx.live or cheap-stocks.biz . You can choose the flavor of sketchiness (gambling, malware, adult, etc) and length. This is a tool that takes any link and makes it look malicious. It works on the idea of a redirect. Much like https://tinyurl.com/ for example. Where tinyurl makes an url shorter, this site makes it look malicious. Place any link in the below input, press the button and get back a fishy(phishy, heh…get, it?) looking link. The fishy link doesn't actually do anything, it will just redirect you to the original link you provided. A good trick along similar lines might be one tuned to incipient censorship patterns in the U.S. For example, a URL redirector that contains the names of certain politicians, beloved white nationalists, etc., along with url keywords designed to trigger negative sentiment detection. [END] --- [1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/09/19/a-url-shortener-that-creates-suspicious-looking-urls.html Published and (C) by BoingBoing Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/boingboing/