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

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

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 include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly rather of to whatever the initial URL was.
You can try this technique with a URL that I recently shortened. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you straight to a copy of the slides that I utilized 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 original discussion URL and see when I developed the reduced URL..
View this brief video to see how you can utilize the “+” trick to learn whats hidden behind a Bitly link..

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

Bitly is a helpful URL shortener that Ive utilized for several years. As a signed up user I can create custom, reduced URLs that people can in fact 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 constantly long..

Applications for Education.
Structure excellent digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities is something that all of us ought to be helping our trainees do. Revealing them little ideas like this one to prevent clicking suspicious links is one of the ways that we can help our trainees build their digital citizenship and cyber security abilities.

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

Bitly is a helpful URL shortener that Ive utilized for lots of years. There is an easy way to quickly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. The technique is to simply add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly rather of to whatever the original URL was.

If you desire 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 original link without clicking it.

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