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.XP sp3 Q6600 2.8Ghz 4Go

So, I've been bothered lately by bit.ly links. These are URLs to http://bit.ly/... that are ubiquitous across the web. How many years have we preached to users, "Do NOT ever click on links that go to websites you do not trust? Avoid websites that redirect you to new servers?" Well, that's exactly what bit.ly does, and it relies upon the security blindness of most of the populace to be a viable system. The advantage of a bit.ly link is all in the market tracking -- it allows a website to hand out different bit.ly masks to different media outlets and then track which URL is the most used for getting back to the site. But how do I know that this funky bit.ly URL, with its garbled characters, is actually going to the reputable URL that it claims to be going to? I can't. So, frustrated, I have avoided clicking on many links. But I've found a workaround. You can do this... tl;dr: Take the bit.ly URL and add a + to the end of it. This brings up the statistics page for that bit.ly link AND it displays the real URL that the link goes to. Then you can copy/paste that real link into your browser or, if you don't mind the tracking, you can go remove the + and let bit.ly do the redirect for you. Annoying, but at least straightforward.