HACKER Q&A
📣 bengtan

Hover over links in email newsletters and see where it redirects to


Hover over links in email newsletters and see where it redirects to


  👤 bengtan Accepted Answer ✓
Author here.

I asked this on reddit and wanted to ask here too, but didn't want to post text and attract the 'self post' penalty. So I posted a link instead.

But here's the text (from reddit) anyway:

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Hi,

I subscribe to email newsletters which contain hyperlinks. I'd like to be able to hover over a hyperlink and see what the URL is before deciding whether to click on it.

However, the hyperlinks are something like this:

https://ben-evans.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b98e2de8...

and I can't easily work out where the hyperlink links to.

(FWIW, this link redirects to: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-florida-idUSKBN... )

Is there some way which lets me find out the destination URL without me having to click on it first?

I don't like clicking on links in emails without seeing where it leads to. For example, if I can see that it's a dubious looking domain, then I would be more careful in case it's a phishing site.

FWIW, I use Gmail so a Gmail specific solution (browser extension?) could work for me. Seeing the link by hovering over it seems natural to me, but I'd consider alternatives too.

Thanks all for reading!


👤 ChrisGranger
curl and grep can do this from the command line. Just paste your link between the quotes like so:

curl --head --location --silent "yourlinkhere" | grep ^Location;

https://curl.se/