Remove URL Shorteners

When inviting someone with a golden ticket, the URL that’s generated is shortened. This is inherently suspicious as it’s mostly scammers and such that use shortener services.

It just makes it harder to get people to click it. A Monzo.com link with the “ticket” as a GET parameter would be a much better solution.

6 Likes

I personally don’t agree that URL shorteners are inherently suspicious. Context is important. A random URL from a stranger is suspicious no matter if it’s shortened or not - likewise, a link sent to you from a friend is generally trustworthy unless it looks incredibly spammy and you have reason to believe they may have had their account compromised.

And the idea isn’t really to “get” people to click on it. Coercing people isn’t the intended design.

The Golden Tickets are designed for you to send them to friends and family, as a bonus to allow them to skip the waiting list. It’s not designed as clickbait or for random tweets to entice strangers. Thus, the person receiving the Golden Ticket should be expecting it anyway.

7 Likes

I agree with what you’re saying about context: it does matter. But only to an extent.

When I sent a ticket to my friend, he looked at me weird and asked me if I was sure it was legit. I then had to reassure him that it was before he would use it.

I think after years of spam on social media et al, users just don’t trust URL shortened links anymore.

Plus, is there really a benefit to using the shortened link?

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Small benefit - not all users are ‘quick’ to know how to open url from email (or else) on their phone or the other way around. Short url is a lot easier to retype between devices.

I don’t really mind either way, I’d only choose Monzo-branded url because it looks a bit more professional.

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I think it’s worth remembering that the URL preview, makes it pretty clear where the link will take you -

so since - as Simon mentioned - the link is expected, I’d be suprised if many people were so put off that they didn’t end up clicking it.

Perhaps if you hadn’t sent your friend dodgy links before, he’d have been ok to click it :wink:

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Aha, there’s been no dodgy links before, I promise. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

The Monzo.me request link isn’t shortened, so it’s not a problem. The golden ticket one is though, and URL previews don’t show up on SMS. :upside_down_face:

I mean, everything else aside, URL shorteners aren’t really even professional. If you absolutely must shorten URLs, I’m sure using your own :mondo: branded domain for the purpose would be a lot better than what’s being used now. :relaxed:

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I think you have a good point with short URL’s. This probably would be important for when you send our marketing emails as in those they are quite suspicious.

In the context of how you meant to use it with :mondo: I think it is not as important as the other person should be expecting the link. If you would share it via Facebook or WhatsApp the link even shows a preview saying “A Monzo golden ticket!”.

Correct me if I am wrong but I find googles short links more trustworthy then bitly :wink:

Personally I treat them all the same. I see no reason to regard Google’s as being any more trustworthy.

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I actually got a golden ticket last week and when I tried to give it to someone, found out Google had actually blocked the short link for being suspicious :frowning: Had to ask support for a new one. This could be a problem with URL shortened links - you lose the control over them…

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Monzo’s said that, that can be fixed (& they’re working on it) -