You may have received email from an unknown or known source
requesting you to open a link for some important information. In most cases you'd be advised not to click the link, but if you are uncertain here is a way to
check the url:
1. Open the email with the link.
2. Right click the link and select “ Copy link location”.
3. Go to the following website: https://www.virustotal.com/en/
4. Click on the “URL” tab in the middle of the page:
5. Enter the link you copied in the box (see print screen) and click on "Scan it!":
Following this, a dialog will then pop up with the results of the analysis. In my case, I analyzed Google (http://google.com) as an example. The results were 0/57, meaning that out of the 57 scans that VirusTotal ran on the website, 0 of them reported anything wrong with the site:
This dialog gives you a lot of information; the time the URL was last analyzed by VirusTotal, the time the URL was first analyzed, and the detection ratio. In general, if the detection ratio is very low you are probably good to go, but if you get more than a few positives you should avoid entering the website. If it has been a while since Virus Total has scanned the page, you might want to click on "Reanalyse" for a more recent virus scan of the page. Finally, if you want a detailed breakdown of each scan and its result, you can click on "View last analysis":
This shows you a scrollable list of virus scanners and their results upon scanning the page. There is also an interface to vote and comment on the site's safety, and "Additional information" tells you a little bit about the page.
As you can see, VirusTotal is a valuable tool for finding out the safety of a webpage, providing a clear and accessible way for anybody to determine whether it is safe to click on any link that they have received.