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

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

This post initially appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it in other places, it has actually been used without authorization.

If you want to attempt 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 initial link without clicking on it.

Bitly is a convenient URL shortener that Ive used for many years. There is an easy method to rapidly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without actually 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.

Unfortunately, not all Bitly users are using them for good reasons. Some individuals use them to hide wicked links. There is an easy way to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without really clicking on the link. The trick is to just add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly rather of to whatever the initial URL was. That will then show you the Bitly page on which the shortened URL is hosted and will reveal you what the initial link was..
You can attempt this trick with a URL that I recently shortened. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you straight 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 discussion URL and see when I created the reduced URL..
Watch this brief video to see how you can use the “+” trick to discover whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

Applications for Education.
Structure excellent digital citizenship and cyber safety skills is something that everybody ought to be assisting our students do. Revealing them little pointers like this one to prevent clicking on suspicious links is among the manner ins which we can help our students construct their digital citizenship and cyber security skills.

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that Ive used for many years. As a signed up user I can develop custom, reduced URLs that people can actually spell. I utilize these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation since the default URLs supplied by those services are constantly long and incoherent..

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

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