Send short links, get an SMS once read | Hacker News Reader

Send short links, get an SMS once read

markasread.org

21 pointsjayjaychicago28 comments

This makes any link you share look significantly more sketchy.

It's a delivery nightmare over SMS and email. Carriers hate URL shorteners

Why do they hate URL shorteners?

Commonly used for scams, carriers will frequently filter messages that contain shortened links and any significant volume can end with the number being blocklisted.

For business/promotional campaigns they don't want the end content obscured at all.

(This is from personal experience running SMS newsletter blasts, they really hate services like bit.ly)

That's really nice to know JoeCool, thanks! There's a fair amount of struggle with the carriers trust scores. Overall, there's an inclination to keep the SMS OTP (so that people don't create hundreds of accounts with the 2 free links) but offer the option to switch to email or WhatsApp once the link is created.

This seems extremely ripe for abuse by scammers, I wonder what a legitimate use case might be?

Basically every business/marketing email you receive works like this: Every link you click is personalized and tells the sender that it was you reacting to their message (and from where as well, thanks to GeoIP).

I can see the point in wanting to know whether your messages are reaching your target audience (or somebody else), but I don't really understand who would want to get that via SMS instead of via e.g. email? Email would be much cheaper.

i built something similar for the mailto link on my personal site, bc i'm bad at checking email and refuse to enable notifications for it

Sounds like a great deal for anyone that feels like they're not receiving enough text/robocall spam. Sorry, OP, but I'm not sharing my phone number with a completely anonymous service. SMS aren't free, and I'd like to know how I'm paying for this in the end.

And what's up with the "Consent is not a condition of purchase" – what am I purchasing? Will I still get a text if I don't consent?

Update: Just saw the pricing page – why is this only visible when clicking the "profile" icon? It's very easy to miss. But at least there seems to be a business model. $1 per notification is extremely pricey though, in my opinion.

GMail opens and caches links, and Chrome prefetches links, so enjoy your two "read" receipts on the link I never clicked.

    if link fetched immediately:
        google_bot
    else:
       user

Yes! The pickle is that the system doesn't know when the link is sent and if it was sent via email/sms/..., only when it's created. Something that helps is a deny list of user agents on the server for obvious things (like when iOS messages previews the URL) that have kept known user agents over many years. The problem with spam filters is that they don't want you to know they are spam filters so the user agents are hard to pin down definitively.

Overall, that's why it gives the user 3 notifications. Hopefully, most folks will know something's off if they get a read seconds after emailing someone.

A smart engineer won't be wasting resources by fetching immediately though. It will trigger by datacenter off-peak hours or by user activity.

Send that link by email, and it will be visited by the email provider first.... I did the same many years ago (but by sending an email instead of SMS) and MS visited links I emailed to myself. But either way, it's a pretty good way to find someone's IP address.

sometimes i just don't have the energy to respond to someone, or read the link i had sent, i really dont need people using something like this in my life stressing me out further

Did this once over email to prove to my mom that the Nigerian scammer was in fact, a Nigerian scammer.

That's a cool use case. Thanks!

Again, a ridiculous spam product is listed on the hn home page. The moderators here are real idiots.

What a nice way to collect millions of phone numbers… /s

I mean you're not wrong

"1. Collection of Your Information We collect information, including: Personal Data: Mobile phone number and other information you voluntarily provide."

https://www.markasread.org/privacy-policy

But the ToS states that they won't share it with any third-parties.

That privacy policy is so boilerplate, it still has

In the footer. I wouldn't trust this policy explains the full extent.

Yikes. Corrected, thanks!

Can we delete our provided data?

That seems like a fair/necessary option. Haven't coded it but will add to my TODO list.

Awseome! How would I go about it at the moment?

Just email support@markasread.org with your phone # and we will help delete the entry.

Sweet!

Just a quick and easy way to see if someone important opened the shortened URLs you sent them

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