This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has actually been used without permission. Websites that regularly steal my (Richard Byrnes) work include CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.

Applications for Education.
Structure good digital citizenship and cyber security skills is something that everybody should be helping our trainees do. Revealing them little pointers like this one to avoid clicking suspicious links is among the manner ins which we can help our trainees develop their digital citizenship and cyber security abilities.

Regrettably, not all Bitly users are utilizing them for great reasons. Some individuals use them to conceal nefarious 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 simply include a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the initial URL was. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the reduced URL is hosted and will reveal you what the original link was..
You can attempt this trick 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 current 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 created the reduced URL..
Enjoy this brief video to see how you can use the “+” technique to learn whats hidden behind a Bitly link..

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

Bitly is a convenient URL shortener that Ive utilized for numerous years. There is an easy method to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. When you include the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly rather of to whatever the original URL was.