How do I know what I'm going to?

[YellowFox]

Ok so I watch a lot of youtube and most of the time they have their own links to stuff however they are almost always a bit.ly link (which I do not trust because the last time I clicked a link like that it went to a malicious site which caused all my paranoia now.) I wanted to know if there was any way to find out where one of those links leads without taking a leap of faith. It would also help to extend said link so I could scan/search it in google.

Fox.

[Pondus]

website analysers

http://zulu.zscaler.com/
http://www.unmaskparasites.com/
http://sucuri.net/
http://quttera.com/
www.urlquery.net   will give you a website picture in top right corner...click to enlarge

Block lists
http://urlvoid.com/
https://www.virustotal.com/nb/#url

[YellowFox]

This works for bit.ly?

[DavidR]

There are browser add-ons that expand these shortened URL (so you can see where they are going to) when you hover the mouse pointer over them.

I use LongURL Mobile Expander 2.0 for firefox, but some shortened URLs may not be compatible.

[bob3160]

The following can also be of help to you:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=93544.msg975678#msg975678