There is an easy way to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. The trick is to simply include a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the initial URL was.
You can try this technique with a URL that I recently reduced. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you directly to a copy of the slides that I used in my recent Intro to Teaching History With Technology webinar. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL+ will lead you to the Bitly page where you can see my original discussion URL and see when I produced the reduced URL..
See this short video to see how you can use the “+” technique to discover whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

This post initially appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. It has been utilized without authorization if you see it in other places. Websites that regularly steal my (Richard Byrnes) work consist of CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.

Applications for Education.
Building excellent digital citizenship and cyber security skills is something that everybody need to be helping our students do. Showing them little tips like this one to prevent clicking suspicious links is one of the methods that we can assist our students construct their digital citizenship and cyber safety skills.

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that Ive utilized for several years. As a registered user I can produce custom-made, reduced URLs that individuals can in fact spell. I use these whenever I require to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation since the default URLs offered by those services are incoherent and always long..

Bitly is a helpful URL shortener that Ive used for many years. There is a simple method to quickly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact clicking on the link. When you include the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the initial URL was.