Not all Bitly users are using them for excellent reasons. Some people use them to hide dubious links. Thankfully, there is a simple method to quickly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact clicking the link. The trick is to merely include a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add 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 straight to a copy of the slides that I used my recent 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 “+” trick to find out whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

Bitly is a convenient URL shortener that Ive used for lots of years. As a registered user I can create customized, shortened URLs that people can really spell. I utilize these whenever I require to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides discussion due to the fact that the default URLs offered by those services are constantly long and incoherent..

Applications for Education.
Structure great digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities is something that everyone must be helping our students do. Showing them little tips like this one to avoid clicking suspicious links is among the methods that we can assist our students develop their digital citizenship and cyber security abilities.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it somewhere else, it has been utilized without permission. Sites that routinely take my (Richard Byrnes) work consist of CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.

Bitly is a helpful URL shortener that Ive used for many years. There is an easy method to rapidly identify 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.