Bitly is a convenient tool for developing brief URLs to share in location of long URLs. Ive utilized it for many years to create tailored URLs that are easy for my students to type. Regrettably, some people use Bitly to attempt to mask URLs to try to get you to click nefarious links. Thankfully, there is an easy method to see where a Bitly link will take you without having to in fact click the link..
The technique is to just include a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly rather of to whatever the initial URL was. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the reduced URL is hosted and will reveal you what the initial link was..

You can attempt 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 but add “+” to the end of it so it reads like this.
bit.ly/ 2ZZnuP2+ you will go to the Bitly page where I reduced my original URL.

Ive created a couple of short video demonstrations 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.