Best of 2021 – See What’s Behind Bitly and TinyURL Without Clicking

As I do every year, Im taking this week as a break from releasing brand-new article and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Heres one from April.

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive used for many years. There is an easy way to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without really clicking on the link. The technique is to just add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the initial URL was.

Regrettably, not all Bitly users are utilizing them for excellent factors. Some individuals utilize them to conceal wicked links. Fortunately, there is a simple method to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking the link. The trick is to just include a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the initial URL was. That will then show you the Bitly page on which the reduced URL is hosted and will reveal you what the original link was..
You can attempt this trick with a URL that I recently shortened. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you directly to a copy of the slides that I utilized in my current Intro to Teaching History With Technology webinar. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL+ will lead you to the Bitly page where you can see my original discussion URL and see when I created the reduced URL..
Watch this short video to see how you can use the “+” technique to discover out whats hidden behind a Bitly link..

If you desire to try this with a TinyURL, tinyurl.com/emkns9a8 will lead you to the page for the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp, however adding a “+” at the end of that TinyURL will take you to the page where you can see the original link without clicking on it.

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive used for several years. As a registered user I can create customized, reduced URLs that individuals can actually spell. I use these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation since the default URLs supplied by those services are incoherent and always long..

Applications for Education.
Building good digital citizenship and cyber security abilities is something that everybody should be assisting our students do. Revealing them little ideas like this one to avoid clicking suspicious links is one of the ways that we can help our trainees construct their digital citizenship and cyber security abilities.

Heres a video introduction of how to see whats behind a TinyURL without actually clicking the link.

This post initially appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. It has actually been utilized without approval if you see it elsewhere.

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