How many times have you seen a link at a blog or web-site that refers to something along the lines of "read me" or "document here"? What about http:tinyurl.com/abc. None of these options are safe and require some special attention.

As an example of the shortened URLs using the TinyURL service:
Wikipedia's page on TinyURL
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TinyURL&diff=283621022&oldid=283308287
can be shortened to http://tinyurl.com/mmw6lb.

Some recent malware that is taking advantage of the URL shortening on Twitter which obfuscates the link so it is easier to fool people with a fake destination. So I don’t want to obfuscate/shorten my links either. Actually, the technique isn't that new, but malware on Twitter is a recent development.

While I sometimes compromise because the URL is long and would be difficult to cut ‘n paste accurately. I’ll make a link with the URL of the site as the text. It still could be fake, but it is a slight improvement over “click here” or “read this”.

How to use Twitter safely is detailed in this BLOG:
http://blog.markheadrick.com/2009/04/16/ways-to-preview-the-destination-of-twitter-short-urls/
What he points out will work on any link that uses TinyURL.com

Something he didn’t mention is to use your browser. Look at the bottom-left of your screen (in the standard settings) when you hover your mouse over a link. It will show you the link. If it asks for you to log into Twitter but it doesn’t start with “http:twitter.com” or “https:twitter.com” then it probably is a fake address that is going to make note of your password.