GoTiny is shutting down

[robvanbakel]

Unfortunately, GoTiny is shutting down due to an increasing number of phishing and scamming attempts. Despite my efforts to prevent illegal activities from happening via GoTiny, the situation has become unmanageable and is forcing me to stop making the API publicly available.

[jessiejs]

Will existing GoTiny links still work?

[JMHBM]

Well this sucks balls.

[robvanbakel]

Will existing GoTiny links still work?

@jessiejs Previously shortened links will open a page displaying the URL it would have originally been redirected to. This way, no existing data is lost and users can still manually navigate to their destination.

I believe that using a load limiter could help (1 request per second). I recommend search about the "express-rate-limit" and "express-slow-down" libraries. Redis as a form of storage would be great, there are several free options, like:

https://render.com/
https://upstash.com/

Unfortunately, GoTiny is shutting down due to an increasing number of phishing and scamming attempts. Despite my efforts to prevent illegal activities from happening via GoTiny, the situation has become unmanageable and is forcing me to stop making the API publicly available.

Blocking malicious domains would not be a good idea? Before registering a resource, check if the domain exists in a table (black list) in DB or hard coded?

[JMHBM]

There's actually no need for you to shut down the website. You just have to add a no liability clause in your terms of service. Just think of how many dingdongs use Bitly, and yet, they keep chugging along. Why? Because of their zero liability clause. Even better if you have a no logs policy. You cannot be held criminally liable for something you have no knowledge of. It's unfortunate but there's scammers everywhere on every website on the planet. People use Google all the time to scam other people. But have you ever seen Google sitting in front of Congress due to their users engaging in criminal activity while using their services? Nope.

Just had a zero liability clause on your website and fire that bad boy up again.

[MagicGamerRMG]

rip GoTiny :/

[Nusab19]

As @jhorner6511 has suggested, you can just add a "No Liability" to this service. And then add a rate limit, this way, you probably don't need to shut this service down.

Another thing I have noticed is that, you are creating new short links for every long url. ( even if the link was shortened previously )
So, you can check if a shortened version of the url already exists in the database.

But if you say that "storing the links in the database" can possibly make you liable, I have a workaround for that too. I'd love to help you throughout this process.

You made a great tool and you should not HAVE to shut it down. ❤