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

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive used for many years. There is an easy way to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without actually 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.

Sadly, not all Bitly users are using them for good reasons. Some individuals use them to conceal wicked links. Luckily, there is a simple way to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact clicking on the link. The trick is to just add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the reduced URL is hosted and will show you what the initial link was..
You can attempt this trick with a URL that I just 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 developed the reduced URL..
Watch this brief video to see how you can utilize the “+” technique to discover whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

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

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

Applications for Education.
Structure excellent digital citizenship and cyber safety skills is something that everybody must be assisting our students do. Revealing them little ideas like this one to avoid clicking on suspicious links is one of the ways that we can help our students build their digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities.

Bitly is a helpful URL shortener that Ive used for several years. As a signed up user I can develop custom, reduced URLs that individuals can in fact spell. I use these whenever I require to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation since the default URLs provided by those services are always long and incoherent..

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

If you wish to try 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 on it.

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