See What’s Behind a Bitly Link Without Clicking On It

Bitly is a convenient tool for producing brief URLs to share in place of long URLs. Ive used it for years to develop tailored URLs that are easy for my students to type. Sadly, some individuals utilize Bitly to attempt to mask URLs to attempt to get you to click on nefarious links. There is a simple way to see where a Bitly link will take you without having to in fact click on the link..
The trick is to merely 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. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the reduced URL is hosted and will reveal you what the original link was..

Ive created a number of short video presentations of how this trick works. This is the Instagram video that I made about it. This is the YouTube video that I made about it.

You can try this with my Bitly link of.
bit.ly/ 2ZZnuP2 which will take you to the registration page for my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter (.
https://practicaledtech.com/weekly-newsletter/). If you attempt the same link however add “+” to the end of it so it checks out like this.
bit.ly/ 2ZZnuP2+ you will go to the Bitly page where I shortened my initial URL.

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