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

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

Applications for Education.
Building excellent digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities is something that everyone ought to be assisting our trainees do. Revealing them little pointers like this one to avoid clicking on suspicious links is one of the methods that we can help our students develop their digital citizenship and cyber security skills.

Not all Bitly users are utilizing them for excellent factors. Some individuals use them to hide wicked links. Thankfully, there is an easy way to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking the link. The trick is to just add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly rather of to whatever the original URL was. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the shortened URL is hosted and will show you what the original link was..
You can attempt this technique with a URL that I recently shortened. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you straight to a copy of the slides that I used my current Intro to Teaching History With Technology webinar. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL+ will lead you to the Bitly page where you can see my initial discussion URL and see when I created the reduced URL..
Watch this brief video to see how you can utilize the “+” technique to discover out whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that Ive used for several years. As a signed up user I can develop custom-made, reduced URLs that people can in fact spell. I use these whenever I require to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation because the default URLs supplied by those services are always long and incoherent..