Never acknowledge nor click any link(s)...Good advice, of course. What I do when a questionable link is involved is to simply hover the mouse pointer over it. All of the email programs I am familiar with will then show a "pop-up" indicating where the link actually goes.
In doing so, what should be looked at carefully is what comes before the first single slash (as opposed to the double slash which follows "http:" or "https:" if present). The gobbledygook which often follows the first single slash doesn’t matter in determining the legitimacy of a link.
As I alluded to in my previous post, I also look at the originating IP address that can be seen in the message properties, and check out what location or country it corresponds to via a service such as maxmind.com or whatismyipaddress.com.
Regards,
-- Al