Perils Of URL-Shortening: Major Garrett’s Inadvertent Link To Softcore Porn

Fox News White House Correspondent Major Garrett was trying to tweet his followers a link to his FoxNews.com blog with some State of the Union excerpts prior to the speech last night.

Instead he tweeted a link for hookers in Vegas. It’s just one example of the dangers of URL-shortening.

So let’s break this down. The actual link, which he tweeted immediately after was to: http://bit.ly/d6WZBu. But as Gawker points out, the original tweet was to http://bit.ly/d6W. And that brought a link to ForWant.com’s Vegas classifieds section for “erotic services.” Yeah. Here’s what happened next:

I apologize. Bit.ly turned my original link to SOTU excerpts to a soft-porn link. NOT my intention. http://bit.ly/d6WZBu

The link just posted works. Any frequent visitor here knows that is not my style. Sorry. Shld have caught it sooner.

For those suckling snide syrup. I publicly acknowledged an innocent mistake and corrected it. If that’s not good enuf, take a hike.

Gawker was part of those “suckling snide syrup,” as they are wont to do. But it’s clear what happened. Garrett wanted to tweet this bit.ly, “http://bit.ly/d6WZBu,” but mistakenly deleted the last three characters and got diverted somewhere very different. Obviously, in this particular case it looks much worse (because it’s to a sex website). But what would have happened if he mistakenly deleted the last two characters instead?

He would have directed his followers to an All140.com site about Joe Wilson (newsy-ish?):

Or how about just one character deleted? It’s Fashionista.com!:

And if he deleted four characters, it would have been a password-protected page of some Swedish digital agency:

Anyway, no harm no foul, Major. Happens to everyone. But just another reminder to edit your tweets, and especially check those shortened links, before sending them out to the masses.

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