Not all Bitly users are using them for good reasons. Some people utilize them to hide nefarious links. Luckily, there is an easy way to quickly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking the link. The trick is to simply include a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly rather of to whatever the original URL was. That will then show you the Bitly page on which the shortened URL is hosted and will show you what the original link was..
You can try this technique with a URL that I just 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 presentation URL and see when I produced the shortened URL..
Enjoy this brief video to see how you can utilize the “+” technique to discover whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

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 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.

Applications for Education.
Building good digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities is something that everyone need to be helping our trainees do. Showing them little suggestions like this one to prevent clicking suspicious links is among the manner ins which we can assist our students develop their digital citizenship and cyber security abilities.

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

This post initially appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. It has actually been utilized without authorization if you see it somewhere else.

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

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive used for many years. There is an easy method to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. The trick is to simply add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the initial URL was.

Bitly is a convenient URL shortener that Ive used for several years. As a registered user I can develop custom-made, shortened URLs that people can in fact spell. I utilize these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides discussion since the default URLs supplied by those services are constantly long and incoherent..