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.

Bitly is a practical tool for creating short URLs to share in location of long URLs. Ive used it for many years to develop tailored URLs that are simple for my students to type. Some individuals use Bitly to try 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 really click on the link..
The technique is to merely add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was. That will then show 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 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 reduced my original URL.