Blocking of shortened URL's

[rando_j]

The Malware Bytes Chrome extension blocks URLs shortened with Buffer's URL shortener. These URLs are in the form of hxxps://t.co/random_chars. If I go to the URL directly Malware Bytes doesn't block it and no malware is found on the website itself.

The problem seems to be only with the shortened URLs, regardless of the actual URL on the other side.

[alvarnell]

That's perfectly normal. URL shorteners are notoriously used to redirect to malicious and annoying sites and there is no way for Malwarebytes to know the ultimate destination so must block them all.

Users should always turn “previews” on for services that allow that when using shortcuts and avoid using others to avoid phishing, unwanted advertising or ransomware/other malware attacks. The Malwarebytes extension will have to be temporarily be disabled in order to do that.