Bitly is a practical tool for producing short URLs to share in place of long URLs. Some people utilize Bitly to try to mask URLs to try to get you to click on nefarious links.
The trick is to just add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly rather of to whatever the initial URL was. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the shortened URL is hosted and will show you what the initial link was..

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

Ive created 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.