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

Ive developed a number of brief video presentations of how this technique works. This is the Instagram video that I made about it. This is the YouTube video that I made about it.

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 try the very same link but 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.