Reveal Destination Of Tiny URLs

Tiny URL services have become very popular nowadays. What tiny URL service does is that it takes a large URL and converts it into a smaller one. Technically it redirects the short URL to the large URL which is convenient in the sense that we don’t have to remember those huge URLs and website addresses. We are given a short URL which can be remembered easily and also is easy to write. Another advantage of short URL is that if there is any restriction regarding the length of the URL, the shorter URL serves the purpose successfully.

Now the problem is that if I get a short URL link from an unknown or even known person, how do I know what is the real URL? I don’t know whether the real URL is a legitimate web address or is being used for spoofing purposes. So I need to know the real URL first before I open the link in my browser to make sure that we don’t get compromised.

Today I found an extension for firefox that serves the very purpose of converting the shorter URLs back into their original ones. The extension name is Untiny.

When this plugin is installed, an icon comes in the address bar of Firefox as shown in the picture below:

The extension can be downloaded from below:

Download Untiny Firefox Extension

If you don’t want to download the extension, then you can go to http://www.untiny.com and type in the URL which you want to reveal and press Extract. Untiny will show you the real URL.

Another way to extract the original URL is to type the following in your address bar and press enter:

http://untiny.com/?url=http://tiny.pl/htk&show=y

where the red coded text is the link of the Tiny URL.