OT - how do you make a long url appear at the receiver?

Depends how paranoid you are. Personally I feel the sites I have recently visited has nothing to do with any one else, least of all some unknown company using the data for their commercial gain.

Also some sites are not averse to placing tracking programmes on your PC so they can "follow" you around the net. I'm not saying that tinyurl, or the sites you get redirected through from tinyurl, do that I just don't like it.

But AFAICS what all they will find out is what websites are visited by someone on your IP address; they won't harvest personal info per se about you (or am I wrong?) - in which case I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep over it.

David