How do I debug an emoticon-based URL?

Question

I came across this URL (NSFW) and need to convert this to puny code.

As an experiment, I'll paste this URL here, but not sure if this will save.

http://..ws/ (NSFW)

How can I convert this URL to a standard DNS name so I can whois the IP space?

This is the Short URL :- `http://xn--ki8hb4a5cudxa08a01a.xn--vi8hiv.ws/` and this is the long URL :- `http://trk.egtcashtrk.com/aff_c?offer_id=48&aff_id=4348&aff_sub=akash` (The message you got was spam, because this links to a dating site.) — Don't Root here plz..., Oct 05 '16 at 14:40
@Don'tRoothereplz... I think you should post that as an answer. — SQB, Oct 05 '16 at 16:15
The link in the question currently redirects to an NSFW page without warning. — murgatroid99, Oct 05 '16 at 22:09
@Don'tRoothereplz... I think it was pretty obvious the message was spam, even without following the link, don't you? — user253751, Oct 06 '16 at 06:09
@user20574 Now that you say it like that, Yes, it is pretty obvious that it's spam. — Don't Root here plz..., Oct 06 '16 at 19:18
@murgatroid99 The warning is that it's embedded in this sort of spam message. — user253751, Oct 06 '16 at 19:44
In an ironic twist, your SU question has probably driven more traffic to this "dating" site than the spammers could have hoped for. Or maybe you were in on the whole thing... — nispio, Oct 06 '16 at 19:52

Josef · Answer 1 · 2016-10-07T14:10:05.920

82

In this case, the domain is ".ws" (xn--vi8hiv.ws). This is a free link "shortener" that can turn any link into emojis. It's free and available at http://linkmoji.parseapp.com

In this case, the translation punycode as Steffen mentioned won't help you, because you just get the domain/ips of this free service.

You need to check the redirects using e.g. curl or your browser's developer tools.

In Chrome's developer tools, it could look like this:

edited Oct 07 '16 at 14:10

answered Oct 05 '16 at 07:38

Josef

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I'm absolutely blown away and horrified that such a service exists. When I read the title of this question I thought "Surely this is some xkcd-style humor" but no... it's a real thing. Next thing you know people are going to figure out how to encode their social media accounts into selfies or some other bizarre internet hack. – thanby Oct 05 '16 at 18:51
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@thanby already done, https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=snapchat+id+selfie&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari#imgrc=iF1Dk0Pa6yliPM%3A – Tim Oct 05 '16 at 22:41
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@thanby and also fb messenger does it with your profile picture: https://imgur.com/a/iJeLE – Tim Oct 05 '16 at 22:47
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@thanby the essence of xkcd-style humor (and the internet in general) is that [someone is bound to make it reality](https://gkoberger.github.io/stacksort/) (if it isn't already) – Amani Kilumanga Oct 06 '16 at 00:31
cURL gives me `Failed to convert ..ws to ACE; String preparation failed`. – TRiG Oct 06 '16 at 14:40
@TRiG if it doesn't work, you have to decode the punycode before. There is for example the [idn](https://serverfault.com/a/335110/211417) tool. But if your shell doesn't handle unicode properly, better use a web tool like [punycoder.com](https://superuser.com/a/1131773/134112) anyways, the output should be `xn--ki8hb4a5cudxa08a01a.xn--vi8hiv.ws` Then a `curl -vv xn--ki8hb4a5cudxa08a01a.xn--vi8hiv.ws` should have `Location: http://linkmoji.parseapp.com/xn--ki8hb4a5cudxa08a01a` somwhere. Put that in curl again and get ` – Josef Oct 07 '16 at 14:03
@Josef. In other words, this is definitely spam (as if we couldn't tell). But I'm puzzled that cURL can't handle it. My shell is GNU Bash 4.3.46 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and I've never had any problems with Unicode. – TRiG Oct 07 '16 at 15:03
Is there any technical reason to have 10 redirects? – Sebb Oct 09 '16 at 11:23
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@thanby At the risk of further derailing this post: Mastercard is looking to roll out "pay-by-selfie" by the end of the year. Let's face it, we're growing old. – Lilienthal Oct 10 '16 at 10:40

SQB · Answer 2 · 2021-08-18T10:28:18.747

30

This is a two-step process, which involved a bit of trial and error in finding the right URL un-shorteners.

First of all, I tried a bunch of URL-unshorteners on the emoji-URL, until I found one that worked.

Unshorten.me turned

http://..ws/

into

http://linkmoji.parseapp.com/xn--ki8hb4a5cudxa08a01a

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to feed that back to itself; it looped back to that same URL.

But Unshorten.it, which choked on the emoji, could handle this URL perfectly well and told me it pointed to

http://getlaid-xxxhoookupnow.com

The description it found for that site contains some words that are NSFW, so I won't repeat it here, but it's obviously spam to say the least, and possibly dodgy in other ways as well.

edited Aug 18 '21 at 10:28

answered Oct 05 '16 at 16:25

SQB

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Are you sure [Unshorten.It!](http://www.unshorten.it/) works? On trying, It just gave me a long *Please Wait*. – Don't Root here plz... Oct 05 '16 at 17:24
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Works for me, but **on the second URL**, the one returned by the first step. – SQB Oct 05 '16 at 17:37
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I don't think you need the description to tell what kind of site `http://getlaid-xxxhoookupnow.com` is. – Nic Oct 06 '16 at 17:01
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@QPaysTaxes Looks like it might have something to do with finding a place to put your RV(?) hookups? – Michael Oct 07 '16 at 02:14

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 05 '16 at 05:58

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You need to convert it to punycode which is the ASCII representation of the name. This can be done for example online at punycoder.com and many programming languages have the necessary libraries if you want to convert it inside a program.

answered Oct 05 '16 at 05:58

Steffen Ullrich

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score 12 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 08 '16 at 02:55

This is amazing! I had no idea you can use emojis in a URL, even though I'm a web developer! The other answer are great, but I found Unfurlr to work well. It allows you to see where something goes, without setting cookies in your browser, and without exposing you to a virus or drive-by-download as you would if you view it in your browser. It also shows you headers and scripts and contents if you need to safely inspect it more closely.

http://unfurlr.com/

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 10 '16 at 09:09

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Just past the URL in the address bar of Firefox browser, it will show you the ASCII form automatically:

I'd expect other modern browsers to have similar behaviour, but I didn't actually test those.

answered Oct 10 '16 at 09:09

Dmitry Grigoryev

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How do I debug an emoticon-based URL?

5 Answers5