Not all Bitly users are using them for excellent reasons. Some individuals use them to conceal nefarious links. There is an easy way to quickly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. The technique is to just add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the initial URL was. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the shortened URL is hosted and will reveal you what the initial 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 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 initial presentation URL and see when I created the shortened URL..
See this brief video to see how you can use the “+” trick to learn whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

Applications for Education.
Building good digital citizenship and cyber security skills is something that everybody need to be helping our trainees do. Showing them little tips like this one to prevent clicking on suspicious links is among the manner ins which we can help our students develop their digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities.

Bitly is a convenient URL shortener that Ive used for lots of years. There is an easy way to quickly 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 original URL was.

Bitly is a helpful URL shortener that Ive utilized for several years. As a registered user I can produce customized, shortened URLs that people can in fact spell. I utilize 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..

This post initially appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it somewhere else, it has been utilized without approval. Websites that regularly steal my (Richard Byrnes) work include CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.