What’s Hidden Behind a Bitly Link?

Applications for Education.
Structure good digital citizenship and cyber security skills is something that all of us should be helping our students do. Showing them little suggestions like this one to avoid clicking on suspicious links is one of the manner ins which we can assist our trainees construct their digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities.

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive utilized for numerous years. There is an easy method to quickly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without really clicking on the link. When you add the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the initial URL was.

Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive utilized for numerous years. As a registered user I can produce custom, reduced URLs that people can in fact 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..

This post initially appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. It has actually been utilized without consent if you see it elsewhere. Websites that regularly take my (Richard Byrnes) work consist of CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.

Not all Bitly users are using them for excellent factors. Some people utilize them to hide nefarious links. Fortunately, there is a simple method to quickly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without in fact clicking the link. The trick is to merely include 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. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the shortened URL is hosted and will reveal you what the original link was..
You can attempt this technique with a URL that I recently reduced. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you directly to a copy of the slides that I utilized 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 created the shortened URL..
Enjoy this brief video to see how you can use the “+” technique to discover whats concealed behind a Bitly link..

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