Use Splitlink for Firefox to check for Redirects

Links are not always as easy to read, especially if a site uses redirects or if someone is posting links using an url shortening service. Parameters and Javascript can obscure links and mislead users if they are not careful and analyze the link before they click on it in their browser of choice.
Advanced users may not have issues figuring out where a link really leads to but inexperienced users may do, and that is why extensions like Spitlink for Firefox come in handy.It basically helps you find out where a link really leads to before you click on it so that you can be sure of its destination.

It does not make sense to check each and every link that you encounter on the Internet.To use the extension, right-click on links that you want to find out more about and select the Splitlink option from the menu that ops up.

A new window will open showing the original link and the reformatted one. Clicking on the reformatted link will open the page in the parent window. Splitlink offers a basic option of finding out where links are redirecting you to without opening those links directly.

Update: The Splitlink extension for Firefox is no longer listed on the official Mozilla website. We have removed the link as a consequence from the article. The add-on closest to this is Redirect Remover which removes some redirects from links that you encounter automatically.

It may even display some of the information that you have come to expect  from extensions of this kind. The issue here is that it seems to concentrate on basic redirects that are visible in the url. While that is ok, it does not include JavaScript links for instance which can be a problem for obvious reasons.

There is also Redirect Bypasser which automatically bypasses some forms of redirects, for instance on image search sites, advertisement intermediaries, surveys and so on. It is an automated extension that you do not need to configure at all to use.

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