What’s Hidden Behind a Bitly Link?

Applications for Education.
Structure good digital citizenship and cyber safety skills is something that everybody must be helping our students do. Revealing them little suggestions like this one to avoid clicking suspicious links is one of the manner ins which we can help our trainees construct their digital citizenship and cyber security skills.

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that Ive used for several years. As a signed up user I can produce customized, shortened URLs that people 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 always long and incoherent..

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

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

Sadly, not all Bitly users are using them for excellent factors. Some individuals utilize them to conceal wicked links. There is a simple way to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact 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 redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was. That will then show you the Bitly page on which the reduced URL is hosted and will show you what the initial link was..
You can try this trick with a URL that I recently shortened. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you directly 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 discussion URL and see when I developed the shortened URL..
Enjoy this short video to see how you can utilize the “+” technique to discover whats hidden behind a Bitly link..

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