Trust.
It’s a concept that carries weight, creating feelings of security, reliability, and assurance. You trust your closest friends and family because it means that, at the end of the day, you’re safe in their company. They’ll be there for you and have your back.
As we all know, there are plenty of bad actors on the internet. They employ tactics like phishing, malware, and sharing exploitative images that can have detrimental effects on individuals, businesses, and communities. Malicious content can spread quickly across the internet in just a few seconds.
Bitly’s commitment to safeguarding users as they shorten, click, and interact with URLs and QR Codes daily stems from our core belief in prioritizing their safety. We also recognize that the wide reach of our platform presents a unique opportunity to make a positive impact on the internet. To that end, we work hard to give our customers and their audiences the secure and transparent online experiences they deserve. Every day, millions of links and QR Codes are generated by Bitly users, which translates into billions of connections each month. That’s why we have a dedicated Trust and Safety Team that ensures our users can safely and confidently engage with links and QR Codes created with Bitly.
When a bad actor tries to mask their activity by hiding an abusive URL in a link, our team is there to prevent that bad link from getting to you. We believe that, with our breadth of reach, we have an opportunity to help make the internet a safer place.
All of this is possible through the team’s three-part approach. First, is safety. We want our users to operate in a safe environment so that they can feel confident exploring the internet with Bitly’s products. Second, we enhance trust through key partnerships to leverage best practices that enrich the trust and safety community’s knowledge base. Finally, there is support. Our support process allows users to report malicious links in real-time so that Bitly can step in and remove them and the entities responsible.
Safety
At Bitly, we strive to make the internet a safer place. This is why we developed a proprietary approach using our patent-pending Bitly Abuse Prevention System detailed below. Our system is designed to monitor and remove URLs that could harm our users.
Bitly’s Threat Detection Service (TDS)
Bitly’s TDS is the Trust and Safety Team’s first line of defense. The purpose of this system is to scan for threats and discover whether a given link threatens our community. The TDS begins its process when a link or QR Code is created on the Bitly platform. If our system discovers abuse, then a message is sent to our Abuse API to mitigate these issues in near real-time.
Bitly’s Abuse API
This is the tool that Bitly uses to manage the status of a URL. The Abuse API is our definitive source of information regarding the trustworthiness of a URL. When the TDS identifies abuse, it communicates with Bitly’s Abuse API to add that URL to Bitly’s database of harmful URLs. We also provide direct access to our API to trusted partners, enabling them to contribute harmful URLs to our database, which likewise puts an immediate stop to the spread of those URLs.
With this system in place, whenever a user interacts with a Bitly Link or QR Code, our system dynamically checks the destination URL against our Abuse API. If the URL is deemed safe, the user proceeds as usual. However, if it’s flagged as harmful, the user is redirected to an informational page informing them of the potential risk and offering guidance on what to do next.
Partnerships
Trust forms the foundation of meaningful connections. Bitly has formed close relationships with a variety of trusted technology partners as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who specialize in disrupting terrorist activity online, detecting and preventing the spread of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), combating phishing campaigns at scale, and more.
Additionally, Bitly engages with many trust and safety organizations to stay proactive in adopting best practices and to contribute to and leverage the growing knowledge base of the community. These partnerships also help guide our future policies and approaches to trust and safety and ultimately bolster the integrity of our platform.
Support
We are dedicated to fostering innovation while upholding our core values, which include strict adherence to the law, promoting diversity, preventing discrimination, defending human rights and privacy, and supporting free expression. We also prioritize protecting the well-being of our employees, customers, and partners. These principles are not just our words on paper; they serve as the guiding force behind every decision that we make. That includes enforcing our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), which is designed to ensure a safe and inclusive environment for all of our users.
Our dedication to these goals feeds into the evolution of our technology. We developed user-friendly tools and resources to give users more confidence when they engage with and create Bitly Links and QR Codes. These include the Bitly Trust Center, a dedicated system that checks the destination of a Bitly Link, a form that anyone can use to report a link that points to harmful content, as well as an appeals process if a user believes a link was blocked in error. Our dedicated Support Team reviews the abuse reports we receive and blocks the link so the harmful content can no longer be reached via Bitly.
In partnership with our Legal Team, as aligned with our AUP, we also review all appeals and unblock links, if appropriate. Bitly also maintains up-to-date Terms of Service, and the Bitly Code of Conduct to communicate our values and set enforceable guidelines for how our services can be used.
A safer internet with Bitly at your side
Our mission is clear: To foster a safe, transparent, and trustworthy internet experience for our users worldwide. Through our relentless commitment to safety, innovative technology, and support systems, we want our users to feel confident in knowing that when navigating the internet via Bitly, the content they are accessing is safe.
In short, we have your back.
