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This website used to be an URL shorten service. But the tool was misused by many spammers / hackers / etc. For this reason I received many complaints from users clicking on the short code and being directed to a spam site / download / scripts and other dangerous links. I tried to keep this tool clean by removing the reported short links but was unable to prevent the continued misuse by some people.

The hosting company Hostgator also started to receive complaints resulting in the suspending / disabling of my whole hosting account which contains also other websites. Hostgator would accuse me of Spamvertising. I had to explain that my tool was being used by others to spamvertise. And I would also fix the problem so that Hostgator would reactivate the hosting account again. After many suspensions I received an e-mail from Hostgator stating the following:


Hello,

We have received complaints of a a domain under your control being spamvertised. Spamvertisement is a violation of our Zero Tolerance Spam Policy as found in section three of our terms of service. Upon inspection, we found that these redirects had been installed on your account by a malicious user who was abusing your short URL service. We will need you to remove these URLs within the next 48 hours in order to prevent any further malicious activities from our network. Once this content has been removed we will need you to take action on this matter and secure your account against any further abuse. Please review the suggestions listed below and let us know if you have any questions regarding this matter.

(a) do not allow URL's to be created to point to other URL shortening services

(b) require verification/registration before shortening service can be utilized

(c) implement Captcha, as this deters the significant majority of spammers who utilize bots to submit URL's

(d) actively block of IP addresses noted to be submitting malicious links

(e) check the target host names against SURBL/URIBL and Spamhaus' DBL - both at the time of creation of the shortened URL and each time it is subsequently accessed

Please let us know if we can do anything else to help or if you have any questions.


In short they wanted me to modify a purchased script to include all the above checks. This would take a lot of time or would cost me a lot of money in case of outsourcing this work. Since the website was not creating any income I decided to shut down the website.

Unfortunately after shutting down the website I still received complaints about Spam-vertising. Hostgator would send me e-mails stating that advertising via spam is a violation of their Zero Tolerance Spam Policy as found in section three of their terms of service. I would reply explaining the site is offline and Spamvertising would not even be possible. So if you think this URL (urlzy.com) is being used to spam you? Then you are mistaking because this site is not operational!