Received a short URL ? Learn the way to unshort it and stay safe

Did your friends or someone you know ever sent you any short, simple URL and when you clicked on it, it took you to an another webpage which has wrong URL ? And you kept wondering how it happened ?

There are many ‘types’ of links floating over World Wide Web. One of these types of links are Short Links, they are short URLs and when you click on them, they take you to another webpage which has long URL, for example *******/13Bd54e. These links are helpful to shorten long, difficult to read and understand URLs. Many times hackers and people with bad intentions short harmful pages or website with the help of short URL service such as *******.

So you now know that this is done with free online URL shortners. Now sometimes someone might send you any such short URL on Social Network or through email or some other way. In this condition, it is not always true that this short URL will not take you to any harmful website, which might automatically install harmful malware in your computer.

So, how would you find that the short URL which you want to click is safe and doesn’t ferry you to some harmful page. The answer is simple – Unshort the Short URL. One of the free online service which provides you the facility to unshort short URL is www.unshort.me, just open unshort.me, enter the short URL which you received, for example – *******/13Bd54e and click on Unshorten button. That’s it, it will provide you the actual URL of the webpage to which you would be taken when you will click on that short URL.

Wasn’t that easy ? After you find the actual URL where you will be taken, you can either open that URL(if you think the site is safe) or you can continue your ‘research’ and can scan the URL to make sure it doesn’t contain any kind of virus or malware.

I hope you loved to read this article. Now it’s your duty to share this article with your friends and people you know so that they stay safe.