Looking Through WMT Inbound Links - risky? (malware)

[besnette]

I look through inbound links in WMT every few months, and I think there has been some value in disavowing bad ones -

But, it occurred to me that a small percentage of these sites may be loaded with malware or spam -

So, how can we go through and look at links to assess quality or not, without the risk of being infected with bad stuff? Ideas?

Thanks for any suggestions!

[brotherhood of LAN]

You can sandbox a program such as your browser to prevent anything malicious making its way permanently into your system.

Also you can use various safe browsing services to give an indication whether a site is dangerous to visit. I believe Google has a free API for it.

[lucy24]

That's where all those annoying Preview hits are useful. All too often you can tell just from the thumbnail what the site is about. At least with people who link to me, I can :(

[besnette]

Great feedback from both of you - thank you.
I was going through links and one site was obviously about to load some nasty stuff onto my computer...

Often just the name of the site is enough to give it away.

Thank you - much appreciated!