Where Does This URL Take Me?

What are short links?

Not all website URL's are compact and easy to read. Some are lengthy, complicated, and not easy to remember. Sharing these URL's on social media would mean that you have to sacrifice the characters available to you on the URL alone potentially, leaving no room for your actual message. In scenarios where you're not limited by the number of characters, sharing a long URL might not look aesthetically good. Heck, a long URL could be even deemed as a suspicious site, eventually, hurting your brand reputation.

The solution to this problem is using a tool to shorten the length of a URL. For example, if instead of sharing this URL https://society6.com/clydedsouza/collection/mama-tell-me-a-story?curator=clydedsouza, I can shorten it to this https://bit.ly/mtmas-merch. That's 58 characters less than the original length!

Like Bitly, a few other online providers, both free and paid, allow you to shorten your URL. Most of these providers allow you to configure a custom short URL, add a custom domain, and record and view rich real-time analytics on every link.

The underlying issue

Every coin has two sides. While it's easier to mask a long URL using a short URL from one of these providers, it has also become easier to mislead users and direct them to suspicious ill-intent websites. Because of this, it is important to get full visibility of the destination site before actually clicking on the short URL, especially if you're clicking these links from an account or email you're not familiar with.

This guide outlines a way of previewing the destination URL before actually clicking on a short link. It's important to note that we're not verifying the contents of the destination site, just the URL itself, so this should not be your entire security strategy. Instead, think of this as the first line of defence. If it passes this, you can rest assured and you don't have to investigate this further. For instance, if the destination URL is https://www.amazon.com/Mama-tell-story-collection-bedtime-ebook/dp/B0819H55PD/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=mama+tell+me+a+story&qid=1624022340&s=digital-text&sr=1-3, you can recognise that it's the Amazon marketplace website so there shouldn't be any need for concern. However, if it's https://www.someshadyurlcom/script/fake-user/download-program/login.html, that might instantly raise a few eyebrows. You get the drill!

With that said, let's look at how to verify if a short URL is legitimate or not.

Bitly

To verify a Bitly URL, add a plus + character at the end of the URL and view this link in the browser. You should see the destination URL printed on your screen. Here's an example of the screen you might see when you visit https://bit.ly/mtmas-merch+.

Image courtesy of the author

You can also click the destination link from this screen that's written in a smaller, muted font to be redirected to that site.

TinyURL

To verify a TinyURL, prefix the URL with the word preview and visit this link in the browser. Here's what you might see when you visit https://preview.tinyurl.com/mtmas-merch.

Image courtesy of the author

You can also click the destination link from this screen to be redirected to that site.

Cuttly

For Cuttly, we'll be suffixing the short URL with an at @ symbol. For instance, if you head over to this short URL https://cutt.ly/mtmas-merch@ that's suffixed with the @ symbol, you should see a screen similar to the screenshot below.

Image courtesy of the author

As instructed on-screen, you can click on the button to be redirected to the destination site at any time.

TinyCC URL

TinyCC URL's can be previewed by adding an equal sign = at the end of the short URL. For instance, if you click on this preview link https://tiny.cc/mtmas-merch=, you should see a screen similar to the image below. Unlike the other competitors, this page isn't too fancy but it does offer a button for the user to click and visit the destination URL.

Image courtesy of the author

For all other providers

There's still plenty of URL shorteners out there and not all of them provide the functionality to preview the destination URL before visiting them. For such requirements, consider using an online tool like WhereGoes.

Enter the URL in the text input and then click the Trace URL button.

Image courtesy of the author

In the screenshot above, I've typed in this short URL https://rebrand.ly/mtmas-merch from Rebrandly and have clicked the Trace URL button to see the results. The results, which are available on the same page but located at the bottom of the screen, are captured in the screenshot below.

Image courtesy of the author

As observed above, this tool clearly tells a user where your link is going to take you. As a bonus, you can use this tool to check any other site too, although most sites shouldn't redirect you elsewhere.

That's it! Thanks for reading.