Facebook Temporarily Bans j.mp Shortened URLs over High Spam Rate

Facebook disabled people's ability to include j.mp links in status and page updates for several hours on Friday because of a high spam rate associated with the URL shortening service.

J.mp is a rebranded, younger brother-like version of bit.ly, the most popular URL shortener on the Internet. However, it is also apparently more favored by spammers.

After reports started flowing in from Facebook users that they can't use j.mp on the social networking site, TechCrunch managed to obtain a confirmation of the block from an official representative.

According to the spokesperson, at the time of the ban, over 70% of j.mp links posted on Facebook pointed to spam sites or other attack pages.

The block lasted for a few hours, during which the social networking site worked with bit.ly to resolve the situation and suspend the offending links.

It's not entirely clear if j.mp's anti-spam protection was easier to bypass than bit.ly's, or if attackers simply preferred the shorter version.

According to an older announcement from bit.ly, the service uses URL scanning technologies from three different security providers: VeriSign's iDefense, Websense's Threatseeker and Sophos' behavioral-analysis engine.

Unfortunately, in this case it wasn't revealed if the temporary ban was the result of an automatic protection mechanism or if a Facebook employee manually enforced it.

Also, it would have been interesting to hear if this was triggered by a sudden spike in spam involving j.mp or if it is a common occurrence.

According to statistics for November from German antivirus vendor Avira, bit.ly was the most abused URL shortener on the Internet in terms of both malware and phishing links.

Meanwhile, j.mp did not even make it to Avira's top 15 list for either category. This suggests that j.mp spam is either a new trend or that it's limited to mostly Facebook.