Bitly is a helpful URL shortener that Ive used for numerous years. There is an easy way to rapidly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact clicking on the link. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was.

Not all Bitly users are using them for excellent reasons. Some individuals use them to conceal nefarious links. Luckily, there is a simple way to rapidly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking 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 shortened URL is hosted and will reveal you what the initial link was..
You can try this trick with a URL that I recently reduced. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you directly 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 original discussion URL and see when I produced the shortened URL..
View this brief video to see how you can use the “+” trick to discover out whats hidden behind a Bitly link..

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

Applications for Education.
Building great digital citizenship and cyber security skills is something that all of us need to be assisting our trainees do. Showing them little suggestions like this one to prevent clicking on suspicious links is among the ways that we can assist our trainees build their digital citizenship and cyber security abilities.

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive used for numerous years. As a signed up user I can produce customized, reduced URLs that people can really spell. I use these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides discussion due to the fact that the default URLs provided by those services are incoherent and constantly long..