Microsoft's URL Shortener (beta) service now at Bitly

I recently been using Bitly to shorten URLs from Microsoft Onedrive, and I noticed today that the shortened URL looked different.

Looks like the Microsoft URL Shortening is now active, in partnership with Bitly which has been rumored for awhile now.

For example, this OneDrive URL 

• https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=8F99649728BEB2F3&resid=8F99649728BEB2F3%212825&authkey=AL0hKHFor92WV3c

shortened  to a cute domain of 1drv.ms

• http://1drv.ms/1rXqrSh

For those that don't know, the Bitly default domain name is bit.ly

• http://bit.ly/1rXqrSh

but this URL works as well.

So its solutions seems to be an URL domain alias.


NY Times uses Bit.ly as well (still working in 2017)


https://nyti.ms/2jHV1mn

https://bit.ly/2jHV1mn 

17-Jan-17 Update
Microsoft apparently did not like this reverse engineering of its shortening service and now produces this obscure link

https://1drv.ms/i/s!AvOyviiXZJmPlSc1CjtKuwc_gqVu  

But using reverse engineering short links and get 

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=8F99649728BEB2F3!2727&authkey=!ADUKO0q7Bz-CpW4&ithint=photo%2cjpg

From here you can get a Onedrive direct download link for this file, check out my original post on this. If you need to share big files directly, you'll want to read it.





Reverse Engineer Shorted URL
Paste any shortened URL into to get original long URL. 

1. Link Expander (http://www.linkexpander.com/) gets you a preview of link.

Phishing Email - Your Apple ID was just used to download xxx - examined

Sample Phishing Email - Your Apple ID was used to download

Recently the "Your Apple ID was used to download xxx" email has come in many flavors, and if it matches the items below, then there a good chance it's a phishing email. But I'll walk you through a process on how to tell for sure. This crafty email has been making it's way through the big 3 email (google/outlook/yahoo) email spam filters. For a background on phishing email read on wikipedia.

What to do? Report them, hover over the iforgot.apple.com link (in your email) and match the URL and click on the match link to report them as phishing to Google.

Report Phishing URLs at Google now 

If you have recievied this email take further action now by click these links

1. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.pharus.com
2. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=aruba.it
3. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.sumanakeerthipiriwena.com
4. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=haroldmkingsley.com
5. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=amarturismo.com.br
6. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.azizanali.com
7. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=lovingcoco.com
8. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=langkawiswee.com
9. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=tradeajeet.com
10. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=trypromocodes.com 

‏

Subject: Your Apple ID was just used to download Candy Crush Saga or Grudge Match (2014) or "Falls Away" by Childhood or Cado HD $5.99 or Lunar Module 3D or Camera Plus Pro $2.99 or StationDigital $9.99 or Summer Games 3D, v1.2 (4+) $8.99  ... from the App Store on a computer or device that had not previously been associated with that Apple ID. Your receipt No.1145624532

Your Apple ID was just used to download Candy Crush Saga or Grudge Match (2014) or  "Falls Away" by Childhood or Lunar Module 3D or Camera Plus Pro $2.99 or StationDigital $9.99 or Camfrog PRO 6.99$ or Summer Games 3D, v1.2 (4+) $8.99  If you initiated this download, you can disregard this email. It was only sent to alert you in case you did not initiate the download yourself. If you did not initiate this download, we recommend that you go to iforgot.apple.com to change your password, then see Apple ID: Tips for protecting the security of your account for further assistance. Regards, Apple TM and Copyright ý 2013 Apple Inc. 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, United States. All rights reserved / Keep Informed / Privacy Policy / My Apple ID

How to tell this is a Phishing email ?

1. Is email is from you to you, then it's phishing.
2. Hover over all links in email, if it's not from the apple.com site then forget it.
   
   
   In above example, all the links and source images seem to be from Apple website except the iforgot.apple.com link.
   
   You can test this in the above example, since I crafted that from source HTML of the phishing email. Try it, hover over links to examine the source URL. Note: I have re-coded iforgot.apple.com to report pharus.com as phishing site to Google.
   
   In the original phishing email, hovering over iforgot.apple.com pointed to spam site pharus.com or www.sumanakeerthipiriwena.com. The correct link when you hover over iforgot.apple.com should be http://iforgot.apple.com.
   
   
   
   Reading email in Outlook 2013 generated pop-up "Click to follow link"
   
3. The best way is to look at message source, see below.

How to examine Email Message Source ?

Now lets look at message source

1. Outlook.com->Actions->View Message Source. 
2. Gmail.com->More (down arrow to top right)->Show original.

For this phony email, well look at the top 25 lines of the message, known formally as the "message header".




At line 23 you have Return-Path: hosting.windows@aruba.it
and is suspect because domain was registered in Italy (.it) and nothing to do with Apple.

A geo location of the ip address confirms it comes from Italy using http://www.ipligence.com/geolocation
Your IP address is 62.149.133.122
City: Soci
Country: Italy
Continent: Europe

Aruba.it is being investigate for a Paypal phishing and has reported links to Italian Mafia.

These are valid return-paths for Apple 

• Return-Path: do_not_reply@apple.com 
• Return-Path: bounces@insideicloud.icloud.com 

Why look at "Return-Path"? When the e-mail is put in the recipient's mailbox, a new mail header is created with the name "Return-Path:" containing the address on the MAIL FROM command. So it's a quick hit to determine authenticity.

Report Phishing Email (not as Spam)

1. Outlook.com->Junk (at Top)->Phishing Scam
2. Gmail.com->More (downarrow to top right)->Report Phishing 

Report Phishing URLs at Google now 

If you have recievied this email take further action now by click these linksHover over the iforgot.apple.com link and match the URL and click on the match link to report them as phishing to Google.

1. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.pharus.com
2. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=aruba.it
3. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.sumanakeerthipiriwena.com
4. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=haroldmkingsley.com
5. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=amarturismo.com.br
6. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.azizanali.com
7. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=lovingcoco.com
8. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=langkawiswee.com
9. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=tradeajeet.com
10. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=trypromocodes.com

If you don't see your URL here add a comment below.

Report phishing at Microsoft and government agencies

1. http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/phishing-faq.aspx

Setting Microsoft Lync Profile Picture with a custom picture on OneDrive

Need to set Microsoft Lync Profile Picture to a web address of your own custom picture easily? Here's how to use an image located in your  OneDrive and set to be your Lync account "My Picture".

Note: Lync profile pics should be 72 px (w)  by 108px (h) and < 30kb.
In OneDrive, right-click on the picture you are interested in adding to your Lync profile picture, and choose Embed. (I know example below is a file, same process)

This will bring up the Embed pop-up.

Highlight and copy the embed HTML code. Paste into text editor.

<iframe frameborder="0" height="120" scrolling="no" src="https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=8F99649728BEB2F3&resid=8F99649728BEB2F3%212780&authkey=AHGTayWelaWRDMA" width="98"></iframe>

Extract the link, and you will get link look like this:

https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=8F99649728BEB2F3&resid=8F99649728BEB2F3%212780&authkey=AHGTayWelaWRDMA

Replace embed? to download? See link below after replace:

https://onedrive.live.com/download?cid=8F99649728BEB2F3&resid=8F99649728BEB2F3%212780&authkey=AHGTayWelaWRDMA

Now you can paste this link into the "Show a picture from a web address" in Lync 2010 or "Show a picture from a website" in Lync 2013 for Windows. Click "Connect to Picture" button will result in connected to picture successfully.

Update get link here at my other post to your profile pic

http://metadataconsulting.blogspot.ca/2017/01/OneDrive-2017-Direct-File-Download-URL-Maker.html

More information at : How to change your Lync profile picture from Microsoft Support.