Click TinyURL Links Without Getting Into Embarrassing Situations

Say you are sitting inside the office cubicle and get an email or a twitter alert from an old college friend that goes something like this:

"Hey! This website is cool, check it out - http://tinyurl.com/161."

You are tempted to click the link but the problem is that you have no clue if that TinyURL link will transport you to some safe-for-work website or not.

Now if you don’t want to get into an embarrassing situation but still would like to check out websites that are redirected through TinyURL, here’s a simple trick:

Go to tinyurl.com and enable the preview feature. This will set a cookie in your browser that will prevent TinyURL from automatically redirected you to the main site - it will only display the underlying web address but won’t take you there.

The other option is that you add the word "preview" to the main URL itself (tinyurl.com/161 => preview.tinyurl.com/161) - use this if you want to check for safe URLs occasionally else the previous trick is better.