Unfortunately I can think of one company in particular that uses tinyurl when you sign up for shipping updates on their website (looking at you Samsung!).

At least with that one:

• you know you signed up for it
• they send a text right when you sign up for it
• they use an official short SMS (5 digit) number.

Personally, I downvoted this because it’s a community for technology related news and I just don’t think it fits the kind of content that we should be seeing here.

To quote one of my favorite authors:

“I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time