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

Applications for Education.
Building excellent digital citizenship and cyber security abilities is something that all of us must be assisting our trainees do. Revealing them little tips like this one to prevent clicking on suspicious links is one of the methods that we can assist our students develop their digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities.

Bitly is an useful 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 add the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the initial URL was.

There is an easy way to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. The trick is to simply add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly rather of to whatever the initial URL 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 utilized 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 developed the reduced URL..
View this brief video to see how you can use the “+” trick to learn whats hidden behind a Bitly link..

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that Ive used for many years. As a signed up user I can develop customized, reduced URLs that individuals can actually spell. I use these whenever I require to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation because the default URLs provided by those services are incoherent and always long..