Applications for EducationAs I wrote last week, building excellent digital citizenship and cyber security skills is something that all of us must be assisting our trainees do. Showing them little tips like this one to avoid clicking on suspicious links is among the ways that we can assist our trainees develop their digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. It has been used without permission if you see it somewhere else. Sites that frequently steal my (Richard Byrnes) work consist of CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.

Recently I composed
a blog site post about how to see whats hidden behind a Bitly shortened URL without actually clicking on the link. The technique is to add “+” to the end of the Bitly URL to see whats behind it without clicking it. A few individuals emailed me to ask if the that dealt with other URL shortening services. The response is it deals with
TinyURLs..

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

Ive attempted the “+” technique with a lot of other URL shortening tools and TinyURL is the just one besides Bitly that Ive discovered it to work with..
Whats the technique?

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 reducing services. If you see it in other places, it has actually been used without permission.

The trick is to add a “+” to the end of any TinyURL address in order to arrive on a safe TinyURL page that exposes what the original link was that got shortened. If you desire to click through to the location or not, you can then choose.
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, but adding a “+” at the end of that TinyURL will take you to the page where you can see the original link without clicking on it.