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

There is an easy way to rapidly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without really clicking on the link. The trick is to merely add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was.
You can try this trick with a URL that I just recently shortened. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you directly to a copy of the slides that I used in my recent Intro to Teaching History With Technology webinar. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL+ will lead you to the Bitly page where you can see my initial presentation URL and see when I developed the reduced URL..
See this brief video to see how you can use the “+” technique to find out whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

Applications for Education.
Building excellent digital citizenship and cyber security abilities is something that all of us need to be helping our students do. Revealing them little tips like this one to prevent clicking suspicious links is one of the manner ins which we can assist our trainees develop their digital citizenship and cyber security skills.

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive utilized for numerous years. There is a simple method to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact clicking on the link. The trick is to just include a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without approval.

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that Ive used for many years. As a registered user I can develop customized, shortened URLs that individuals can really spell. I utilize these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides discussion because the default URLs supplied by those services are constantly long and incoherent..

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

Heres a video overview of how to see whats behind a TinyURL without really clicking the link.