You must have come across urls like http://goo.gl/XoG1z .They surely make it easier to share and remember long urls but are prone to be used by hackers.Since you so not know what site you are being redirected to beforehand this exploit can easily be used for phishing and other illegitimate uses.
In order to know beforehand the url you are opening it's better to check out to what url you are being redirected.
For url shortened by google(like the one shown before) you can add a '+' symbol to get the info.For example to get info about http://goo.gl/XoG1z just go to http://goo.gl/XoG1z+
For all other url short urls you can visit longurl.org they decode for a number of services.You can also get their firefox addon(it works for firefox4 and firefox 5.it also works for ff6 but somehow it shows incompatible) and Chrome extension.
In order to know beforehand the url you are opening it's better to check out to what url you are being redirected.
For url shortened by google(like the one shown before) you can add a '+' symbol to get the info.For example to get info about http://goo.gl/XoG1z just go to http://goo.gl/XoG1z+
For all other url short urls you can visit longurl.org they decode for a number of services.You can also get their firefox addon(it works for firefox4 and firefox 5.it also works for ff6 but somehow it shows incompatible) and Chrome extension.