Link cloaking is a method to replace a long URL in the browser address bar with the short one. For example, the link like "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bor_3vxnJPI/?utm_source=twitter" is replaced with "https://yourdomain.com/video". The feature's purpose is to hide possibly important parts of links like UTM parameters, affiliate code.
The most frequently cloaked websites among Short.io users are:
- Typeform.
- Cognitoforms.
- Formsite.
- Google Datastudio.
- Google Docs.
- Google Spreadsheets.
- Zoom.
- Amazon S3.
- Youtube.
If you are trying to cloak links with these services, the error "Cloaking is forbidden by destination URL with X-Frame-Options header" may occur. The main reason for its inception was to provide clickjacking protection. This includes a page rendering in a frame, iframe, or object. Iframes are used to embed and isolate third-party content into a website.
YouTube is one of the websites that forbids link cloaking. Sometimes you inevitably need to hide youtube links because of the important information behind it.
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Go to the video you want to cloak.
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Copy embed code
- Extract the link from the embed code from the src value.
Example:
iframe width="1280" height="692" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Bor_3vxnJPI" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen>
- Shorten the link.
This way, the link will be shortened, and you will successfully hide important values.
Short.io Link Cloaking
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- link cloaking is forbidden
- x-frame error
- how to hide links
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