I’ve read several scary articles lately, all of which say a link scanner is a good idea. Does Avast AV include one of these? If not what should I do?
Advice please.
no, avast doesn’t include any of these, AVG does… and I can easily live without it 
…this said it’s not extremely reliable, as it doesn’t scan very deeply… better options are DrWeb extension for Firefox, and Finjan…but none of these are ideal solutions; I’d rather rely on avast webshield that will detect malware when the others give you an OK and the site is clean :
WebShield will do the job better if you enter (click) the link.
Link Scanner drops the browsing speed significantly.