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Where a short link goes

A short link shows neither the domain nor how many middlemen count your click on the way. Paste it here — we walk the chain for you and show every step, the final address and the tracking tags in it. You never have to click anything yourself.

Works with any shortener and with ordinary links that redirect.

Ready to check

Our server follows the link, not your browser: whoever counts the clicks gets no address, no cookies and no fingerprint.

Why look at where a link goes at all

A shortened link hides the domain — and the domain is the only thing by which a person can tell a real bank site from a lookalike. That is why short links are used both in newsletters and in scam messages: in either case you see the same faceless address and decide blind.

The second thing a chain hides is the middlemen. Between the shortener and the target page there are often counters and affiliate networks, each adding its own tag and remembering the click. Expanding the link shows you all of them at once.

More on this: stripping tags from a link, if you need to forward it to someone, and a check of whether a site opens from other countries.

The link is only half of the trail

The other half is your address: the shortener sees it, and so does every counter along the way. 404 VPN closes that part, and we keep no visit logs.

How it works →

FAQ

guest@404vpn:~$ cat unshorten-faq.md
[01] $ Will my click be counted? ▸
> The shortener’s counter goes up by one — and that one is our server, not you. Your browser never touches the link: no address, no fingerprint, no cookies. To whoever counts clicks, you stay unknown.
[02] $ Why are there several steps in a row? ▸
> That is how advertising and affiliate programmes work: the shortener hands you to a counter, the counter to an affiliate network, that one to the shop. Each of them adds its own tag on the way. A chain of four hops is ordinary for a link from a newsletter or a product post.
[03] $ What are those tracking tags at the end? ▸
> utm_source, fbclid, gclid and their kind. They are not needed to open the page, but they do tell where exactly you came from and tie the click to your profile in an ad system. We show the address without them — that is the one worth opening or forwarding.
[04] $ Is the final link safe to open? ▸
> We answer a different question — where it leads, not whether it is good. Look at the domain: if a short link turns out to point at something that looks like a bank but has an extra letter or a foreign zone, do not go further. We read only the response headers and never open the site itself, so we cannot judge its content.
[05] $ The link did not expand — what does that mean? ▸
> Either the address has already expired, which happens often with shorteners, or the server is not answering, or the chain goes in circles. In each of these cases we say at which step it stopped rather than pretend the link leads nowhere.