If you're on a pc, these extensions (or alternatives you trust) should always be installed.
Malwarebytes, AB, Popup Blocker (strict).
MB stops you from visiting any website marked as malicious, ABP blocks the ads and PB blocks all popups, (though it kinda gets in the way of some websites that need popups, so i turn it off on legit sites)
and on mobile get a better browser that does all these things by default.
O . o
Thats some good standard advice, but why risk contamination? I mean sure if you're slumming it you should always wear protection, but it's never guaranteed you will skate by unscathed.
That advice seems to be missing an obvious one too. uBlock Origins, you can also use the filter list to create your own personalized black list if ever there are companies who start annoying you so much that you don't even want to accidentally give them the possibility of click revenue.
And for browsers, at least give some suggestions. Like Brave, LibreWolf or Waterfox.
As for why I'm not suggesting Edge, Chrome, Opera or Firefox. Edge and Chrome is relatively self evident with the ways in which Microsoft and Google have been behaving like the unstoppable monopolistic juggernauts that they are and their hostile nature against users, with both of them loving to scrape your data and the latter working very hard against adblockers while promoting and protecting scammers on Youtube that actively makes all us users less secure.
Opera due to dubious origins and also similar security worries. And Firefox because of their changes in their terms and services that have reduced your privacy and safety.
LibreWolf and Waterfox are Firefox branch/offshoots. And Brave, while Chromium, is typically well regarded in terms of security and privacy and also has built-in adblocking.
You can also make use of Virustotal to check a link before you use it. Virustotal is a site, you can use it to verify files or a link for you. The information isn't the be all end all for files mind you, since there are cases of files that are 100% safe, but have false positives. Gotta love those complications huh?