Since you like to downvote my bot who is warning users about the dangers of short links and their use in an ongoing phishing attack I will personally be commenting on your posts.  Anyone upvoting this guy ask yourself why he doesn't want people to know short links could be dangers.  Also ask yourself why he would attack a bot that is warning people of these dangers.  Really don't know why people are upvoting this copy/paste youtube crap in the first place.  

**To the readers of the post:**  Short links are provided by [url shortening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening) services.  The short links they provide can be useful in some cases.  Generally their use is benign.  But as with all useful tools there are dangers.  Short links can be used to hide all sorts of things.  Quite frequently they are used to hide referral links for instance.  While not dangerous this can be deceptive.  They can also be used to hide dangerous links such as links to phishing sites, sites loaded with malware, scam sites, etc.  You should always be extremely cautious before clicking on one.  If you don't know and trust the poster don't click.  Even if you do you should still be cautious and wary of any site you are sent to. It's always better to visit the site directly and not through a short link.  

**To the author of the post:**  While short links may be useful on some sites they are not needed on steemit.  You can use markdown to format your links such as this link to [steemit](https://steemit.com).  It's as simple as `[steemit](https://steemit.com)`  Unlike short links this allows the reader to see where they are going by simply hovering over the link before they click on it.