A URL may redirect you to a webpage containing a virus, or an XSS vulnerability. There is a lot of vulnerable webpages available on the internet, and these vulnerable webpages can be exploited by a black hat hacker, that could result in a huge loss of data & money.
Any website can have these vulnerabilities, there might be a webpage opened in your other tab which contains a vulnerability, and even companies like Adobe, Yahoo, etc. had these vulnerabilities.
• Never click on a link which is sent by a stranger.
• Never open a suspicious link.
• Never open a shortened URL.
Sometimes it becomes our necessity to open a suspicious/shortened URL, in that situation we can use any one of the following tools to avoid getting hacked while opening a suspicious/shortened URL.
1. Qubes:
Qubes OS is a free and open-source, security-oriented operating system for single-user desktop computing. Qubes is a very secure operating system because it has different security domains for different purpose. It is extremely strong against social engineering attacks. Qubes is regarded as the most secure operating system. You can create different domains for different purpose, and if your X domain gets hacked then your Y domain wouldn't be compromised, for instance, if you want to open a URL which looks suspicious, then you can open that URL in the disposable domain, a domain particularly created for that URL, and once the URL is closed, the disposable domain will automatically get destroyed.
2. VirtualBox: The purpose of using VirtualBox is same as the purpose of Qubes, but instead of having different domains in one operating system, VirtualBox can be used to install different operating systems inside one operating system. You can use all the installed operating systems for different purpose.
FULL GUIDE FOR VIRTUALBOX