LW tabgen@ live.com wrote
[Obfuscated link to]
http://reviews.ebay.com/A-Guide-to-T...00000001406477

JW wrote:
Along with a healthy dose of Ebay spam.

(Google Groups has managed to completely **** up
their once-very-useful search engine)--but anyway:
http://groups.google.com/groups/sear...rk &scoring=d

As this author has multi-posted this to hell and back
and as I've seen several folks that have given it a thumbs-up,
I looked at the page
and it's less spammy than your hand wringing would indicate
(or maybe I've just got my script-blockers/AdBlock really well tweaked
out).

The page might be useful for somebody shopping for a scope.
For several reasons, this IS riding a fine edge of spaminess.
I agree that
this poster's use of obfuscated (redirected) URLs is unnecessary
and as that is a technique generally used by shady types,
it should be avoided.

To the OP:
If you think some "newsreaders" *cough*Microsoft*cough*
will break your long link, then including
a SECOND (short) version of the link AFTER THE **ACTUAL** LINK
is a considerate practice--but is NOT a substitute for the real URL.