URL redirection service makes innocent URLs look sinister

ShadyURL: "Don't just shorten your URL, make it suspicious and frightening."

The shady URL for ShadyURL is http://5z8.info/--INITIATE-CREDIT-CARD-XFER--_r8a4a_dogfights (Via Neatorama)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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LeFunk

Nah, they make them pretty short. My gallery of steampunk unicorns (original URL way too long) got shortened to a nice
http://www.goatse.fr

Much better!

Moderator note: Click that link at your own risk. You only get one set of eyes and you can’t bleach your brain.
- Anonymous
  
  I don’t believe you, I refuse to click.
- rennie
  
  I’m ashamed to say that even though I recognized the link, I clicked it.
Anonymous

This works so well that Websense has blocked the link at my office:

This Websense category is filtered: Potentially Damaging Content. Sites in this category may pose a security threat to network resources or private information, and are blocked by your organization.
attheelephant

Boo, #3, boo.
tinyxl

Reminds me of another url shortener, http://mug.gd/ , which lets you change content of the page itself. For instance http://mug.gd/L5QPL
middleclass

Yeah #3, read the policy on self-linking.
Chrs

Hah, that’s excellent!
Anselm

THIS IS BRILLIANT! Seriously! It’s not often something triggers a good minute of loud, chortling belly laughter, but this did. I’m so gonna use this!
Hagrid

SWEET! Can’t wait to use this!
mongo

Inigo Montoya: You keep using this word “shorten.”
I do not think it means what you think it means.
- DaveP
  
  yeah, shorten isn’t correctly used there.
  
  HOWEVER as an alternate, they could remove ‘just’ to fix it.
JoshuaZ

I prefer http://www.socuteurl.com . It makes urls look cute. For example, I’ve just added boingboing.net which is now linked by http://www.socuteurl.com/cozzyfoobear . URLS by socuteurl are often actually shorter and are surprisingly easy to remember.