Avoid Clicking on Spammy Links with URL Expanders

When URL shorteners hit the internet, everyone loved to shorten their links so they were easier to share on social media and other websites. Unfortunately, spammers too use this great online service to disguise malicious links.

In order to avoid clicking on spammy links, it’s recommended using a URL expander.

What is a URL expander?

A URL expander is an online service that’s used to find out the destination of a shortened URL before clicking on the link. This way you can avoid ending up with some malicious malware or landing on a spam page.

Here are some free URL expansion services that will give you some peace-of-mind while browsing.

1.  VirusTotal

VirusTotal inspects items with over 70 antivirus scanners and URL/domain blacklisting services, in addition to a myriad of tools to extract signals from the studied content. You can select a file from your computer using your browser and send it to VirusTotal. As with files, URLs can also be submitted via several different means including the VirusTotal webpage.

VirusTotal can be useful in detecting malicious content and also in identifying false positives – normal and harmless items detected as malicious by one or more scanners. By submitting files, URLs, domains, etc. to VirusTotal you are contributing to raise the global IT security level.

2.  CheckShortURL

CheckShortURL is an expand link facility which allows you to retrieve the original URL from a shortened link before clicking on it and visiting the destination. It provides furthermore information about unshortened URL such as title, description, keywords and author of the page.

CheckShortURL also checks if the original URL is on search engines, like Twitter, and lets you know if the hidden link is safe or not.

3.  URL Expander

URL Expander unshortens any URL to a long URL masked by any URL-Shortener. You can unshorten multiple URLs at once by entering just one per line.

URL Expander is the fastest and easiest to use service for safely demask shortened or obfuscated URLs. It’s a free service, however it is limited to 1,000 requests per day.