URL Uncover Pro is a free web service which shows you the screenshot or preview of a shortened URL before you click on it. With url shortening services coming in to the picture, we don’t actually know what site we are visiting when we click on a shortened url. And on the internet there are both kinds of links which are genuine and ones which are malicious. So how do you know if the link you are clicking is taking you to a safe site or not. Here is where URL uncover pro comes in to rescue you. The web service will scan the shortened link and show you a screenshot or preview of the website the link will take you to. Along with the screenshot you will also see the original link, the title and trust level of the link. All this information is checked through McAfee SiteAdvisor. This way you will know where you will be taken before you click on the link.
All you would need to do is copy the shortened url you are suspicious of and paste it in the box provided on the website. Like shown in the above screenshot. Now click the uncover button. It will take a few seconds to check or scan the link details from McAfee SiteAdvisor. You will be shown the uncovered original URL along with that it will also pull up the title, description, keywords, screenshot associated with that link.
In the trust level column it will show the levels in four colors: Green, Yellow, Grey or Red. Green would obviously mean safe to visit, Yellow means proceed with caution, Red means not safe to visit, while Grey means there is not enough information available.
The web service worked great on older links or url’s, but it had a problem with links which were recently posted. For most of the recently posted links I got a Grey trust level, which means there is not enough information available about the link. Could just mean that the page had not been indexed by Google or hasn’t been visited by a lot of people as it was posted yesterday only.
Other than this issue the web service worked like a charm. You can also buy this script from the website if you would like to implement this functionality on your website.
Another similar service which you can check out it WOT browser add on to scan links on a webpage.
This link scanning web service supports over 100 link shortening websites and can be used easily on your mobile device as well. So next time you have a doubt about a shortened URL, you know a easy way out, just go to URL Uncover Pro and see a preview before you click the URL.
Check out URL Uncover Pro here.
