Not all Bitly users are using them for excellent reasons. Some people use them to hide wicked links. There is an easy way to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact clicking on the link. The trick 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 shortened URL is hosted and will reveal you what the initial link was..
You can attempt this trick with a URL that I just recently shortened. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you directly to a copy of the slides that I used in my current Intro to Teaching History With Technology webinar. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL+ will lead you to the Bitly page where you can see my initial presentation URL and see when I developed the reduced URL..
Watch this short video to see how you can use the “+” technique to learn whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

Applications for Education.
Structure good digital citizenship and cyber safety skills is something that everybody need to be assisting our trainees do. Revealing them little tips like this one to prevent clicking suspicious links is among the methods that we can help our trainees develop their digital citizenship and cyber safety skills.

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive utilized for lots of years. There is an easy way to quickly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. When you add the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly rather of to whatever the initial URL was.

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive used for several years. As a registered user I can develop customized, reduced URLs that people can really spell. I use these whenever I require to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides discussion since the default URLs supplied by those services are always long and incoherent..

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it in other places, it has actually been utilized without consent. Websites that frequently steal my (Richard Byrnes) work consist of CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.