If you are into microblogging, such as Twitter, you may have seen links like https://tinyurl.com/y6qwut9l popping into your timeline more often than not. This is what we call a shortened link.

If you never paid much attention to these links, perhaps you should keep reading this article. Hopefully at the end of your reading you will have learned something new :)

Why shorten a link?

Many are the reasons behind a shortened link. The more common is that due to the character limit imposed on these microblogs, each and every character counts. A normal link which is 40 characters long in its shortened version will have about 24 or less. So you see, it makes sense to shorten a link when you have the characters limit against you. I would think you wouldn't like not being able to express your ideas just because a link has taken the space that you could use for it, would you?

But wait. This isn't the whole story. Pretty much of what we have in terms of technology and the like has a dark side. Why would it be different with it?

A malicious person would shorten a malicious link that could easily take you to a malicious website with malicious purposes. And now I should keep myself from typing malicious, I know it :)

Anyway,  that's the main reason which made me write this article. Today you'll learn how to shorten your links but above anything else, you'll learn how to identify where that shortened link is taking you. And after learning your lesson you definitely should put it into action because if you don't do, who knows what kind of devil you may find somewhere along the line.

How to make a long link shorter?

Now that you know what's a shortened link and reasons for having one, it's time to start learning more about them. So let's start with how to make your own shorten links.

There are a lot of services to do it. Among the most famous are Bitly and TinyURL. For this tutorial we'll be using TinyURL.

How to shorten a link using TinyURL?

1. First, go to this page.
2. Now, in the edit field, type in (or paste) the link you want to make shorter.
3. There is another edit field where you can create a customized URL. Note that you don't need to type
   

   tinyurl.com/yourlink

   because "tinyurl" will be always there. As such, you only need to type

   yourlink

4. Now, locate and activate the "Make TinyURL!" button.
5. When the page refreshes, you'll see the following information::
   

   The following URL
   your original link
   has a length of
   numbers of characters on your original link characters
   and resulted in the following TinyURL which has a length of
   numbers of characters contained on the shortened link characters
   shortened link

6. You can then copy the new generated link and use it wherever you want.

How to reveal a shortened link to find out where it's taking you?

Now that you've learned how to make your own shortened links, it's time to learn how to find out where a shortened link will take you.

There are a good few sites which will make a shortened link longer again. You can find them easily with a quick search on Google. However, for this tutorial, I want to tell you how to find what a shortened link is about by using the link shortener itself. Believe me, it's possible and will require just a few steps, which you'll learn below.

How to reveal a TinyURL Link?

1. First, copy the shortened link. For this example I'll be using the link from the beginning of this article, which is https://tinyurl.com/y6qwut9l.
2. Now, paste it somewhere. Just remember that you will need to edit it so a text editor is more than recommended.
3. You'll need to do the following change on the link that you've pasted:
   right after the last "/" in "https://", add "preview." (including the dot, without quotes).
4. At the end, your edited link should look like https://preview.tinyurl.com/y6qwut9l.
5. Now, just paste the edited link into your browser's Address Bar.
6. When the page is loaded, you'll be able to see the following:
   

   Preview of TinyURL.com/y6qwut9l
   This TinyURL redirects to:
   https://blindhelp.net/user/10587/content

7. You can then choose to proceed by clicking the "Proceed" link just below this information.

How to reveal a Bitly Link?

Here, the process is almost the same described above.

1. First, copy the shortened link.
2. Now, paste it somewhere. Just remember that you will need to edit it so a text editor is more than recommended.
3. At the end of the pasted link, add a "+".
4. Now, just paste the edited link into your browser's Address Bar.
5. When the page is loaded, you'll be able to see the date when the link was created and where it goes. You can then choose if you want to proceed by clicking the link just above the "Copy" button.