Bitly is a practical tool for creating short URLs to share in location of long URLs. Some people use Bitly to attempt to mask URLs to try to get you to click on nefarious links.
The technique is to just add 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 show you what the original 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 try the 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 reduced my original URL.

Ive produced a couple 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.