What’s Hidden Behind a Bitly Link?

Bitly is a convenient URL shortener that Ive used for many years. There is an easy method to quickly 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. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without consent. Websites that frequently take my (Richard Byrnes) work consist of CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.

There is an easy way to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact clicking on the link. The trick is to merely 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.
You can try this technique with a URL that I just 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 original presentation URL and see when I created the shortened URL..
View this brief video to see how you can use the “+” trick to discover whats hidden behind a Bitly link..

Applications for Education.
Building good digital citizenship and cyber security abilities is something that everyone should be assisting our trainees do. Showing them little tips like this one to prevent clicking on suspicious links is one of the manner ins which we can assist our trainees build their digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities.

Bitly is a convenient URL shortener that Ive utilized for many years. As a signed up user I can produce customized, shortened URLs that individuals can in fact spell. I use these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation since the default URLs provided by those services are incoherent and always long..

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