Ramblings of a CyberSecurity Nerd

Investigating Suspicious Shortened Links: A Defender’s Perspective

Shortened links are everywhere — in texts, emails, social media posts, and even customer service replies from major companies. They look clean, they’re easy to share, and they hide just enough information to make you pause.

That pause is exactly what saved me recently.

🚩 What Happened

I received a public support reply from a well-known antivirus company. The message looked polite and professional, but instead of offering clear help, it pointed me to three different Bit.ly links with vague instructions:

“Click here to contact support.”
“Click here to manage your settings.”
“Click here to fix the issue.”

There were no visible domains, no preview of where the links led, and no real context.

To the average user, this might seem normal.
To someone with cybersecurity training, this raised every red flag in the book.

🔍 My Response: Treat It Like a Threat

Instead of clicking, I took the suspicious links directly to VirusTotal — a security tool that scans URLs and files using dozens of antivirus engines.

Two scanning engines flagged one of the links:

  • One marked it as “suspicious”
  • Another labeled it “phishing”

That could’ve been the end of it. Many people — even in cybersecurity — might see that and walk away.

But then I dug deeper.

📑 The Details Tab Tells a Bigger Story

VirusTotal’s main verdict tab shows what different scanners think. But if you stop there, you’re only seeing part of the picture.

In the Details tab, I could:

  • See the redirect chain behind the Bit.ly link
  • Trace the traffic to the final destination
  • Confirm the domain was, in fact, Avast’s legitimate support page

So was the link “malicious”? Technically, no.
But was the implementation irresponsible? Absolutely.

🧠 Here’s the Bigger Problem

Most people don’t know what VirusTotal is.
They don’t know what link expansion tools are.
They don’t know how to verify anything — because they’ve never been taught to.

They see a brand name, they see a “helpful” message, and they click.
Because that’s what the internet has trained them to do.

And now?
We’re having to retrain entire generations to do the opposite — to pause, to question, and to verify every link they see in an email, a DM, a text, or even a customer service reply on a review platform.

Clicking used to mean convenience.
Now it could mean compromise.

🔐 Why Shortened Links Create Real Risk

Shortened URLs break visibility. Period.

They make it impossible to:

  • Verify where a link actually leads
  • Recognize a phishing site before landing on it
  • Know if the link is legitimate or not — even if it’s posted on a trusted platform

They’re also commonly used by threat actors to:

  • Obscure malicious redirects
  • Deliver fake login pages
  • Bypass basic link scanners and filters

So when a cybersecurity company uses them in public support replies?
That’s not just lazy — it’s dangerous.

✅ If You Work in Security — or Just Care About It:

Here’s what companies (especially those in the tech and security space) should be doing instead:

  • Use full, branded links that show exactly where they go
  • Stop embedding Bit.ly links in public-facing messages
  • Add context — say what the link does and where it leads
  • Train your support teams to understand the optics of link obfuscation

And for users who want to protect themselves:

  • Never trust a short link without expanding it
  • Use checkshorturl.com or unshorten.it to preview where it leads
  • Use tools like VirusTotal and dig deeper than the red/yellow/green flags — check the redirect path, certificates, and domain reputation
  • When in doubt, don’t click

💬 Final Thoughts

My investigation didn’t uncover a phishing scam.
It uncovered something just as risky: a trusted company using bad habits that look like scams.

If I hadn’t known better, I might’ve clicked without checking.
If someone else hadn’t checked, and the link had been malicious — they might’ve walked straight into a trap.

Security isn’t just about blocking threats. It’s about building trust, through clarity and transparency.

Bit.ly might be convenient.
But in cybersecurity?
Convenience without clarity is a risk.

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