Reveal TinyURL Links

While TinyURLs can sometimes be handy and short and pretty to pass around and post in your blog, they also effectively hide the original URL.  What this means, is that sometimes, people can hide all sorts of URLs behind it, including those you may not really want to visit.

Here are two ways you can unmask those URLs.

The first way is to bookmark this link (right click on the link, bookmark link or add to favorites):

Embiggen

Whenever you visit a page that has TinyURLs on it, click the bookmarked link, and it will replace all the TinyURLs with their actual URLs.  You can visit the author’s site for this tool here: http://ghill.customer.netspace.net.au/embiggen/

The second way is go directly to the TinyURL site and click the “enable previews” link: http://tinyurl.com/preview.php?enable=1

You can also bookmark the enable link directly: http://tinyurl.com/preview.php?enable=1

You will have to have cookies enabled for this to work.  Basically, what it does is visit the TinyURL website when you click on a TinyURL, show you what the actual link looks like, and at which time, you can choose whether or not you really want to visit the link.

(Originally published on pcmech.com)