Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive utilized for numerous years. There is an easy method to rapidly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without really clicking on the link. When you add the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was.

Applications for Education.
Building excellent digital citizenship and cyber security skills is something that all of us must be helping our trainees do. Revealing them little ideas like this one to avoid clicking on suspicious links is one of the ways that we can assist our students build their digital citizenship and cyber safety skills.

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that Ive used for several years. As a registered user I can produce customized, reduced URLs that people can actually spell. I utilize these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation since the default URLs offered by those services are always long and incoherent..

There is a simple method to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without really clicking on the link. The technique 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 trick with a URL that I recently reduced. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you directly to a copy of the slides that I utilized 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 original presentation URL and see when I produced the shortened URL..
Enjoy this brief video to see how you can utilize the “+” trick to find out whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. It has been utilized without authorization if you see it in other places. Sites that routinely take my (Richard Byrnes) work include CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.