What’s Hidden Behind a Bitly Link?

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that Ive used for many years. There is an easy way to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without really clicking on the link. When you include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was.

Bitly is a helpful URL shortener that Ive used for many years. As a signed up user I can produce customized, shortened URLs that individuals can actually spell. I utilize these whenever I require to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides discussion because the default URLs provided by those services are always long and incoherent..

Applications for Education.
Building good digital citizenship and cyber security abilities is something that everyone need to be helping our students do. Showing them little pointers like this one to prevent clicking suspicious links is one of the manner ins which we can assist our students develop their digital citizenship and cyber security skills.

There is a simple method to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without really clicking on the link. The technique is to just add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was.
You can attempt this technique with a URL that I just recently shortened. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you directly to a copy of the slides that I utilized in 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 produced the reduced URL..
See this short video to see how you can use the “+” technique to discover whats hidden behind a Bitly link..

This post initially appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it in other places, it has been utilized without authorization. Sites that routinely steal my (Richard Byrnes) work consist of CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.

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