Safe URL shorteners

This is an announcement from Lightspeed about two new URL shorteners that are safe, and will therefore not be blocked by the content and security system on our campus network.

In late 2009 Lightspeed Systems noted an increase in the misuse of URL shortening/redirect services (e.g. Tinyurl.com, bit.ly, cli.gs). These are services that take lengthy URLs - often with descriptive attributes embedded by web developers - and make the associated pages available through a shortened web address.
Unfortunately, these services create a couple of problems for school networks. First, they make it possible for users to access proxy servers and circumvent the filter and your policies. Second, these links are used by spammers to hide the true destinations of links in their messages. As a result, Lightspeed Systems changed the category for these sites to the normally blocked Security.proxy category.
Of course, we recognize that there are several reasons that URL shortening can be useful, so we are providing an alternative that schools can use safely: lsurl.me and mbcurl.me. To remain CIPA compliant, we check all submitted URLs against our database and will not shorten URLs that are in our porn or security categories.
Also our shortener works as a re-director, not a proxy, so all shortened URLs are redirected to the requested site and will fall prey to any applicable content filtering policies.
Review "URL Shortener Redirects" on the Lightspeed Wiki to ensure lsurl.me and mbcurl.me are in an allowed category - and that all other URL shortening websites are in a custom-blocked category that redirects access attempts to either lsurl.me or mbcurl.me.