The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible(creepylink.com)
233 pointsby dreadsword4 hours ago23 comments
  • postalcoder3 hours ago
    There may actually be some utility here. LLM agents refuse to traverse the links. Tested with gemini-3-pro, gpt-5.2, and opus 4.5.

    edit: gpt-oss 20B & 120B both eagerly visit it.

    • devsdaan hour ago
      I wish this came a day earlier.

      There is a current "show your personal site" post on top of HN [1] with 1500+ comments. I wonder how many of those sites are or will be hammered by AI bots in the next few days to steal/scrape content.

      If this can be used as a temporary guard against AI bots, that would have been a good opportunity to test it out.

      1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618714

      • xlii6 minutes ago
        I posted my site on the thread.

        My site is hosted on Cloudflare and I trust its protection way more than flavor of the month method. This probably won't be patched anytime soon but I'd rather have some people click my link and not just avoid it along with AI because it looks fishy :)

      • jnrk33 minutes ago
        Of course, the downside is that people might not even see your site at all because they’re afraid to click on that suspicious link.
    • Barathkanna27 minutes ago
      Sounds like a useful signal for people building custom agents or models. Being able to control whether automated systems follow a link via metadata is an interesting lever, especially given how inconsistent current model heuristics are.
  • gnabgib4 hours ago
    Related: A URL shortener not shortening the URL but makes it look very dodgy (434 points, 2023, 100 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609461
  • arjvik3 hours ago
    My favorite link of all time:

    https://jpmorgan.c1ic.link/logger_zcGFC2_bank_xss.docm

    Definitely not meta

    • 2 hours ago
      undefined
    • fuddle2 hours ago
      Imagine using this as your personal website lol
  • bityard3 hours ago
    IIRC, shadyurl was the original version of this. Doesn't seem to be around anymore, though.
    • nomel2 hours ago
      shadyurl a whole bunch of different incredibly shady domains that were used at random. it was beautiful.
  • caminanteblanco2 hours ago
    I'm not sure what the use case for this is, but I've been using it as a inefficient messaging service with my girlfriend, ie:

    https://c1ic.link/campaign_WxjLdF_login_page_2.bat

    You seem to be able to encode arbitrary text, so long as it follows [A-Za-z0-9]+\.[A-Za-z0-9]+

  • lzap35 minutes ago
    I like how old-school HN comment section does not care about creepy links at all. Or link for that matter.
  • dieggsy38 minutes ago
    This is fun. Is it not checking for previously submitted URLs though? I can seemingly re-submit the exact same URL and get a new link every time. I would expect this to fill the database unnecessarily but I have no idea how the backend works.
    • saghm7 minutes ago
      Am I missing something, or would these essentially be implemented via DNS records? It's not clear to me that keeping the links in a database would be necessary at all (unless the DNS records are what you mean by "database")
  • zakki35 minutes ago
    Is this suspicious: https://microsoft.c1ic.link/0B7jqd_invoice.vbs ?
  • jhalderman hour ago
    Fantastic! I miss the original ShadyURL.

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31386108

  • FuturisticLover35 minutes ago
    I am sharing content using these creepy links to send to office people.
  • dreadsword4 hours ago
    Saw this on relaunched Digg and figured HN would appreciate it.
    • koakuma-chan4 hours ago
      I don't appreciate how AI generated this website looks.
      • nimih2 hours ago
        It seems appropriate that, for a website whose purpose is to make links which raise your suspicions, the visual design itself also raises your suspicions.
      • olyjohn2 hours ago
        Just looks like every other generic framework oriented site.
      • 4k93n23 hours ago
        which bit are you getting an AI smell from?
        • koakuma-chan3 hours ago
          gradient background, card, button
          • Alupis2 hours ago
            Perhaps, but nearly every tutorial in all the modern frameworks demonstrate this exact style.
    • bundie2 hours ago
      Digg is back?

      Edit: looks like you need an invite code.

      Bummer

  • abhinai37 minutes ago
    Please take my upvote. :)
  • fancychancy3 hours ago
    Haha, it's fun. Just thinking, is there some place where creepy links would be better ?
    • AnotherGoodName3 hours ago
      I've been at a company that internally sends out fake links that log the user and links to an educational page on internet safety.

      I honestly don't mind too much since it's a once a year thing (hacktober) and honestly companies should be trying to catch out employees who click any and all links.

      • trollbridge2 hours ago
        We used to have fun hammering millions of requests to such URLs from a VPS when they would send such emails to role mailboxes.

        Eventually we got asked to please make it stop. I asked them to please stop sending fake phishing emails to robots.

  • CGMthrowaway3 hours ago
    Use case? Besides humor and phishing tests
  • awesome_dude4 hours ago
    For humour I shortened "https://www.facebook.com/"

    And got https://twitter.web-safe.link/root_4h3ku0_account_verificati...

    • vanc_cefepime3 hours ago
      I added google.com and it spit out https://twitterDOTc1icDOTlink/install_Jy7NpK_private_videoDOTzip

      Interesting that it spit out a .zip url. Was not expecting that so I changed all the “.” to “DOT” so I don’t get punished for posting a spammy link despite this literally being a website to make links as spammy and creepy as possible.

  • fuddle2 hours ago
    lol, I'm not clicking a .vbs link
  • CrimsonCape4 hours ago
    It is hilarious and i'm not clicking any link lol.
  • thesebas14 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • hnst14 hours ago
    [dead]
  • pabs33 hours ago
    Please don't make any more URL shorteners, they are just a bad idea.

    https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/URLTeam

    • aussieguy12343 hours ago
      I always end up making my own, they're so simple to write.

      Saves using one of the "free" ones which looks like its free but you're actually on a free trial, then you can't access your links after that trial expires.