Bitly is a helpful URL shortener that Ive utilized for many years. There is a simple way to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact clicking on the link. When you include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly rather of to whatever the initial URL was.

Bitly is a convenient URL shortener that Ive utilized for several years. As a signed up user I can develop customized, reduced URLs that individuals can really spell. I use these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides discussion because the default URLs offered by those services are always long and incoherent..

Applications for Education.
Building good digital citizenship and cyber security skills is something that all of us should be helping our trainees do. Showing them little ideas like this one to avoid clicking suspicious links is one of the methods that we can help our students develop their digital citizenship and cyber security skills.

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

There is a simple method to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. The trick is to merely add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly rather of to whatever the initial URL was.
You can try 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 produced the reduced URL..
View this brief video to see how you can use the “+” trick to learn whats concealed behind a Bitly link..