readyrangers.tzo.com has 20 years of links on it. I send links out every day for our Royal Rangers "Church Scout type Group with 500+ members" While I agree I don't click on email links from people sending me emails that I don't know or solicited for yet even at that my virus software catches what ever I miss. I run a server in my house that this site is hosted from. Worked for at&t for 42 years (retired this year) fixing broadband lines..... I have seen a lot of things but clicking on links is a daily thing for most folk. Best defense is a good backup system. I click on links most every day.
My inner voice is screaming at me reading this.. While clicking links is a daily experience for most.. it is not safe by any means. I am an IT security specialist, and the things I have seen (and done.. hey, I got paid to break things.. and we will leave it at that).
The best solution is to disable all scripting, but that leaves a crappy browsing experience. In the past, a 0 day vulnerability in the jpg graphics library on all windows machine existed, attackers would create auctions of desirable items on Ebay, and upload images loaded with malware that would compromise a machine by merely loading the image. This was quite a few years ago, but it gives you an idea on how easy it is to perform large scale attacks. Currently (as in the last week or two), a DNS attack that was supposedly patched in 2008 has reared it's ugly head again, allows for DNS cache poisoning (when you query say google.com a poisoned cache will resolve to an IP of an attacker, not google itself, when you say login to the "gmail" page that loaded, you are really sending your user/pass to the attackers, who then proxy the request to the real gmail, so you don't know what is happening).
The best solution.. assume your machine is compromised, and use it accordingly. Don't trust the transit networks (your ISP, the ISP of the site or service you are trying to use), utilize end to end encryption, don't use non HTTPS/SSL based sites and services...
And I think I may have derailed the thread heh..