Don’t click before you look.

Most of you know that it’s not a good idea to click on a link in an email from somebody you don’t know.

Many of you know that it can also be a mistake to click on a link in an email from somebody you do know.  Hackers sometimes manage to break into your friends’ and colleagues’ email addresses and send spam out to everybody in their list of contacts.

In some email software, just hovering over the text of a link will cause the URL to which it is actually going to send you (not always the same thing as the text) to pop up at the bottom of your screen.   That’s one way to tell if the email that looks like it’s from Microsoft offering you an urgent security patch is really sending you to Microsoft (unlikely) or to SomeFakeSpammySite.com

However, there’s one kind of link where that won’t help you—and, you guessed it!—the spammers have figured this out.

There are sites out there which will take a long link and shorten it into something that will fit on Twitter or display better in an email.  This is a very useful thing when used for legitimate purposes, but it can mask the identity of a site you don’t want to visit.

It turns out, however, that these URL-shortening sites have got you covered.

This excellent information is brought to you courtesy of Hmm…, the owner of which has given me permission to link to this page, http://www.hmmm.ip3.co.uk/twitter/short-url-check-they-are-safe.shtml.

I encourage you to go to that link to read more and to see the examples.  Meanwhile, a brief summary appears below:

You can add a + sign to the end of a URL that begins with bit.ly to go to a page which displays the real URL and some statistics on page visits, etc.

You can stick “preview.” in front of a URL that begins with tinyurl.com.  So it would read preview.tinyurl.com/WhateverTheShortCodeIs, and you will go to a page which displays the real URL.

Google’s URL shortener lets you add “.info” to the end of the link to get to a page showing the real URL.  You recognize those shortened URLs because they start with goo.gl.

(When I say the URL starts with these text strings, I mean after the “http://” part.)

It’s a really good idea to use these tips any time you encounter a shortened URL.

And many thanks to Hmmm… for helping us all stay safer on the Internet!