TCP/IP Guide

URL Obscuration, Obfuscation, and General Trickery

Most of the time, the owner of a resource wants the URL that refers to the resource to be short, simple and easily understood. Thus, long and complex URLs are usually the result of necessity, accident, or ignorance. Some resources need to have long names for a specific reason, such as the use of the long query string in the Google example earlier; other times, URLs are made long because the owner of the resource doesn't realize that using a long DNS host name or file name will make for a long and unwieldy URL.

Whatever the reasons for these situations, they are not deliberate. Recent years, however, have seen a dramatic rise in the use of intentionally long, complex, confusing and deliberately ...