A friend of mine recently emailed me (and others) and included a link in it, however I found the link to be suspicious and did not open it up. In the process I chatted with the friend who had sent me the email and asked him why he sent a bad link in the email, turns out the poor guy did not know about the email, and his account had been hacked by someone.

Now I am pretty tech savvy and can easily spot suspicious URLs and stay away from it, but I wonder how many other people would have clicked on that link?

And I am pretty sure that many would have done it without thinking twice, the link in question was for a cheap make-me-rich-quick gimmick, however it could have been anything for that matter, it could have been a Trojan or spyware, who knows?

Online Link Scan is a handy service which will tell you if a link is affected and if there are threats attached to it, just copy the URL you are about to access and scan it online, Online Link Scan will show you a report on whether or not a site is safe to visit from multiple Antivirus and safe browsing websites.

Online Link Scan also has a browser search plugin for IE and Firefox ^[1], using which you can easily look up a URL, however this service is not the only thing you should care about for your online security, do take a look at several other PC security tips ^[2] and online safety tools ^[3] we have doled out in the past, be sure to get a good antivirus ^[3] and free antispyware tool ^[4] to help you keep your PC safe and secure.

Online Link Scan ^[5] [via ^[6]]