How to See What’s Hidden Behind a TinyURL

The technique is to add “+” to the end of the Bitly URL to see whats behind it without clicking on it. A few people emailed me to ask if the that worked with other URL shortening services. If you see it in other places, it has actually been used without authorization.

Applications for EducationAs I wrote last week, building excellent digital citizenship and cyber security skills is something that all of us must be helping our students do. Revealing them little ideas like this one to avoid clicking on suspicious links is among the methods that we can help our trainees develop their digital citizenship and cyber security skills.

The trick is to include a “+” to the end of any TinyURL address in order to land on a safe TinyURL page that exposes what the original link was that got shortened. If you want to click through to the location or not, you can then decide.
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.

Ive tried the “+” trick with a lot of other URL reducing tools and TinyURL is the only one besides Bitly that Ive discovered it to deal with..
Whats the technique?

This post initially appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. It has been utilized without approval if you see it in other places. Websites that regularly steal my (Richard Byrnes) work include CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.

Recently I composed
The trick is to add “+” to the end of the Bitly URL to see whats behind it without clicking on it. A few people emailed me to ask if the that worked with other URL reducing services.
TinyURLs..

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

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