Never open a stand alone link! A legitimate link about a topic from a credible, known to you person, should include a comment that explains what you’ll find if you click through, and why they think it’s relevant to to the discussion.
There are specific "cloud based" sites specifically for sharing "links" to documents, articles etc. that are monitored and safe. Google Drive, Drop Box, ICloud, One Drive, Google Workspace to mention a few. Drop Box and Google Drive are the most popular. If you have a good Internet Security Program installed like BitDefender or Norton they will alert you if you are clicking on a suspicious link giving you the opportunity to exit. If you are still not comfortable with your computer knowledge you can add a VPN App like Surfshark or Malwarebytes. Surfshark is a little overkill for my needs as it will not even let me log into Amazon or Home Depot, so you have to pause the app and retry. Another internet safety item re online banking is always completely close out of your web browser after you log out of your banking site. Then clear all cookies. When you open your browser again delete history relating to your bank. Another good practice is to delete cookies nightly as well as browsing history. I keep my current day browsing history, deleting the previous days. That way your passwords for commonly used sites like email or Facebook etc will not be erased
