Safer Browsing: How To verify the links before clicking on them

With so many malicious links going around these days, it is hard to be safe even in your social media platforms and messaging services like Skype. Links are extremely easy to hide and while you may think a link is legitimate it can very well hide something. Shortened links are the worst offender while HTML links are far easier to detect.
Short links

The only way to verify the integrity of short links is to use a service dedicated to that. There are multiple services for this that you can easily find on Google like the ones listed below. You simply have to enter your link and the websites will automatically check where it goes. In the examples below I have created a shortened link to this website and used the services below to check it:
http://longurl.org/


http://checkshorturl.com/



http://unfurlr.com/

HTML Links
This is very easy to check and you should never be fooled if you follow a simple technique. When you see a link in a website, simply roll your mouse over it. In the bottom of your browser you will be able to see the actual link in spite of what the text shows. Another way is to right click and view the source. A lot of websites, including us, use this technique to change a long URL like a download link for an application to its name, like this uTorrent

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