About lil’url

lil’url is a very simple site - when you find a page on the web whose address is too long to pass along easily, you can use lil’url to generate a far shorter, far simpler address to share.

You can then share the shorter URL via email / newsgroup posting / AIM / ICQ / MSN / YAHOO / IRC / telephone / telegraph / morse code / carrier pigeon / etc. Most network-aware applications will recognize it as an URL and even turn it into something clickable for you!

How private are my shortcuts?

Not at all. Anyone can go to any lil’url shortcut at will. Some day in the future we may incorporate some facility for private shortcuts, but presently that functionality exists only in our imagination.

For this reason, we wouldd suggest not using an URL with user/password information embedded (ala http://user:pass@lilurl.com/secret/bankinfo.html), unless you're comfortable with the fact that anyone bored enough to randomly enter lil’url shortcuts may stumble across said private material.

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How long do the lil’url shortcuts last?

Shortcuts are never deleted from the database, unless you are abusing the service (see the Quazi Legal Mumbo Jumbo section for what we consider abuse).

So the answer is, for as long as this site exists. We don't foresee any reason to believe that will be any time soon. If we should ever lose interest in maintaining/hosting the database of links, we'll gladly pass it (and the lil’url codebase that accesses it) along to whoever may want it.

Who is behind this?

lil’url was created by members of Marginal Ideas. The raw code was written by Sean Oelkers, and likely will be released for free non-commercial use once it's up to his standards. If you'd like to use the code for commercial purposes, I'm sure Sean would be willing to work something out! :)

Quazi Legal Mumbo Jumbo

Marginal Ideas is not affliated with any of the sites accessed through its database and does not endorse or recommend any particular products, services, or opinions presented at said sites. We merely forward you to a long URL from a shorter one. We are not responsible for anything illegal or harmful to yourself or your computer that may be linked.
Your use of this site is at the discretion of Marginal Ideas. While we will not be actively monitoring the links added to the database, certain uses of this service are most definately not welcome and will not be tolerated if discovered:
- If you insist on using the lil’url service in unsolicited commercial email (aka SPAM), don't be surprised if we redirect your shortcuts to bizarrely inappropriate locations.
- If you insist on using the lil’url service to link to any form of child pornography, we will readily forward any information we can ascertain about the URL submitter to appropriate authorities.
- Repeatedly submitting the same URL (or many dummy URLs) over and over, whether to get a 'choice' shortcut, or just in an attempt to flood the database, will be dealt with by redirecting your precious shortcut to something diametrically opposed to your cause, or merely deleted.
- Additions to this list of inappropriate uses may be altered at will.