Applications for EducationAs I wrote recently, constructing great digital citizenship and cyber security abilities is something that all of us should be helping our trainees do. Showing them little tips like this one to avoid clicking suspicious links is among the manner ins which we can help our students develop their digital citizenship and cyber security abilities.

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

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

The trick is to add a “+” to the end of any TinyURL address in order to arrive at a safe TinyURL page that reveals what the initial link was that got reduced. If you desire to click through to the destination or not, you can then decide.
If you desire to try this with a TinyURL, tinyurl.com/emkns9a8 will lead you to the page for the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp, but including a “+” at the end of that TinyURL will take you to the page where you can see the original link without clicking it.

The technique is to include “+” to the end of the Bitly URL to see whats behind it without clicking on it. A couple of 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 utilized without approval.

Last week I wrote
a blog post about how to see whats concealed behind a Bitly reduced URL without actually clicking the link. The trick is to add “+” to the end of the Bitly URL to see whats behind it without clicking on it. A few individuals emailed me to ask if the that worked with other URL reducing services. The answer is it works with
TinyURLs..

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