Acceptable-use policy

What you may not do

You may not create or share Shortlen links that lead to, or are used for:

• Phishing, fraud, or impersonating a person or brand to deceive people.
• Malware, viruses, or files meant to harm a device.
• Spam, or sending links in bulk to people who did not ask for them.
• Content that is illegal where you or your audience are, including material that exploits or endangers children.
• Content that infringes someone else's copyright, trademark or other rights.
• Hiding a destination that would be blocked if its real address were shown, or redirecting to a different place than a visitor expects.

How we enforce this

Every link's destination is scanned when the link is created and rescanned daily. We check the destination address against established threat-intelligence feeds — PhishTank, URLhaus (abuse.ch), SURBL, urlscan.io and AlienVault OTX — to catch phishing and malware.

Where a destination is flagged, we follow a warn-then-block process: we show a warning interstitial before sending a visitor on, and if the destination is confirmed malicious or stays flagged, we block it. Links that point at known-malicious pages are blocked automatically. If we find or are told that a link breaks this policy, we may disable the link, block its destination, or suspend the account behind it, without notice where the risk is serious.

We try to be fair and proportionate, and to act faster the more harmful the misuse is.

Reporting misuse

If you have seen a Shortlen link being misused, please tell us on the report a link page. Include the short link and what is wrong with it, and we will look into it.