Best Internet Safety Check Freeware
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In a Hurry?
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Introduction
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Internet safety software helps you avoid online scams, identity theft, phishing, spam, and malware (including viruses, Trojans, adware, and spyware). There are many free options for Internet safety, including site advisers, site and link scanners, content filters and website blockers. Regular use of these types of software generally helps improve your online safety. You should also never consider any security solution 100% safe, so it is best to use safe surfing practices. Prevention, luck, and user involvement is an essential line of defense. Many sites conceal their deceitfulness; for example, let's say you simply want a relaxing fish tank screensaver, and you decide to search for one at Google. The search item doesn't sound malicious and Google is a known safe site. Right? Here are my real life results for a likely search term you might use. I searched Google for "screensaver" and found that 9 out of the 14 links on page 1 get dangerous warnings from WOT. So you have a 64% chance of surfing to a malicious site for that sensible search item. For the search item, "fish tank screensaver," WOT gave 12 of the 18 links on page 1 red warnings (plus 2 yellow alerts), which gives you a 67% chance of surfing to a red marked dangerous site (78% if you include yellow warnings). And "free screensaver" gave me an 89% chance of surfing a dangerous site. Searching for "porn" is 50% safer than searching for "fish screensavers." Maybe fish aren't that important after all. Overall the numbers aren't that bad for most search results, but you would never know whether your particular search item is deadly unless you used safety advisers. McAfee SiteAdvisor estimates that about 5% of web traffic receives its red or yellow warnings, myWOT rates about 5% of sites as dangerous, and Exploit Prevention Labs' LinkScanner technology flags about 2%. But it's obviously much higher for certain types of websites such as those for "screensavers, free games, [and] contests" (McAfee FAQs). In other words, malicious sites try to lure you with appealing offers, such as for a free fish tank screensaver. Internet safety software includes many different types of security methods.
Here are some good combinations:
But advisory software like SiteAdvisor or WOT is not zero-day protection since a "good" website could decide to go over to the dark side, and users may make mistakes or disregard advice. LinkExtend, in fact, is a new option that combines several advisory sources to try to minimize the chance of any one service missing a risky site. Link and website code scanners, however, have the same limitation as any virus or malware scanner in that they don't find everything. They have the advantage of scanning the current content of websites, however, and not suffering from the limitations of advisory software (that might not be perfectly up-to-date). The Internet safety software in this article is especially important because all the best security setups of firewalls, antivirus scanners, antispyware scanners, software updaters, secure erasers, drive encrypters, password managers, anonymous surfers, virtual protection-wares and magic defensive spells in the world (and yes, some of us use all of those minus the magic) will not completely prevent you, say, from entering your credit card information on an online form and sending it to scam artists. For the sake of keeping down the length of this article, I split it in two. Here is part 2: How to Block Bad Websites. |
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Discussion
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It's excellent for giving you detailed warnings about potentially malicious websites. "It will keep you safe from online scams, identity theft, spyware, spam, viruses and unreliable shopping sites" (myWOT.com). WOT integrates well with many major search engines and online email providers, so it will quickly indicate the safety of websites in search results and links. This allows you to decide whether to surf to a site in advance. Best of all: it uses a fantastic warning screen to empower users to avoid potentially bad websites without using "censorship" filters. If you happen to load a risky website, it will warn you before you interact with the site. But if you want to block risky websites completely, you can customize it to block sites in "Settings..." > "Warnings." The blocking feature, however, does not allow you to choose to ignore the warning and go to sites, and I had a few problems with it (it uses a slow "loading screen"; it reloaded pages after switching tabs -- like while I was editing this). You can also adjust and set the level of threat that will prompt warnings and blocking. If you don't like to see all the safe indicators in search results, then you can check "Show only negative ratings" in "Settings..." > "Searching." It provides two distinct types of scores, including a circular symbol based on 5 colors from red to green for a website's trustworthiness, reliability, privacy, and child safety. But the 5 "people" icons indicate the reliability of the color scale ratings, so the greater the number of darkened icons, the better the supporting evidence for a site's ratings. It installs as an add on for both Firefox and Internet Explorer, and it provides a bookmarklet for Safari and Opera users to allow them to view a popup of website ratings (but it doesn't allow these users to create new ratings). 2. Firefox users with fast Internet connections may want to try LinkExtend, which incorporates advisory ratings from many different free sources. It's new and may still have some bugs, but it has the potential to be the most secure. Read more about it over at Gizmo's article: New Firefox Extension Makes Browsing Safer. It may be a good idea to turn off the McAfee SiteAdvisor rating since some of the comments question LinkExtend's ability to load SiteAdvisor's ratings accurately. And you may want to set it to wait for the ratings at 10 seconds in "Options" > "Main" so the ratings do not suddenly change, say, from green to yellow or red. Here is a screenshot. In my testing on a dialup connection it did not perform very well in three major ways: the ratings may change dramatically as it continues to load them from various sources (this was on the 10 sec. wait setting), clicking on the security icon does not display the ratings very well (they reload every time you click, they are very slow, and they change like a slowly spinning lottery wheel sometimes), and after disabling it my entire Internet connection seemed to speed up. Therefore, it doesn't just slow down your Internet, it may mislead you with an early "safe" rating before it changes to unsafe.
SiteAdvisor also installs as an add on for Firefox and Internet Explorer. It gave Firefox problems when I tested it. Firefox started to crash and the computer froze a few times, but this might be because of my setup. There are some reports and questions over the infrequency of its ratings. Additionally, in its "reviewer central" it has posted several websites where it is considering a change of rating based on user votes. So it is starting to integrate WOT style ratings but not as often or as quickly as WOT. Both SiteAdvisor and LinkExtend can filter potentially malicious sites from search results. SiteAdvisor also has secure search engines, and LinkExtend can filter child inappropriate search results. These are not so helpful for parental control, but they may help make sure site content is family friendly when you search around with your kids. 4. If you need extra security to do your online business or for whatever reason, then Comodo's Verification Engine may be a good solution. Comodo's tool has anti-phishing, anti-keylogging, and ensures that website logos and login boxes are legitimate. It works with Firefox and some other browsers. If you are extra suspicious of a certain site or email or want extra security for online transactions, it would be a good additional tool. But it does, however, constantly run in the tray. II. Website Scanners: The following scanning options are good complements to WOT, LinkExtend, or SiteAdvisor, which may not rate rarely visited sites and have a chance of being out-of-date. Scanners may not be as sensitive to as many forms of scams and malicious content on sites, but they scan the active content of sites in your search results or emails or even a specific web page on a site. But, of course, scanners sometimes cannot scan a link if it has moved and sometimes they have errors and fail to rate as well. 1. AVG LinkScanner is a great additional tools to scan for malicious content. It scans web pages in real-time and produces a color coded rating. It acts as a preventative scanner for search engine results (preventing you from surfing to bad sites in the first place) and as a silent shield constantly scanning the active content of sites. It's a good choice for when other safety check freeware fail to rate a site, or for a second opinion on suspicious sites, search results, and email links (since site or link scanners scan the current content of sites). But it warns that it only provides basic antivirus, antispyware, and safe surfing protection. Plus, you must have an Internet connection for it to install. Note on a LinkScanner Lite version from Exlabs: It also helps protect against "exploits, hacked pages, phishing and fraud scams, and malicious lure sites" (explabs.com). You could keep its add-on optionally enabled if you use Firefox on faster Internet connections, but I suggest turning off the LinkScanner Lite monitor from automatically starting since it is not needed all the time and the add-on works without the active monitor; just open the "Console" program when you want to scan a link. On slower connections it may have more errors and difficulties scanning at all. It's on-demand scanner obviously works with any browser. Read an article about the main differences from site advisors for more information. 2. Finjan SecureBrowsing also scans website code and does a behavioral analysis to detect known and unknown threats from active content (from JavaScript, VB Script, ActiveX, Java applets). It "identifies potentially malicious code such as spyware, hacking code viruses and code that tampers with your PC system settings" (securebrowsing.finjan.com). It provides simple warnings or green checks next to search engine results. It works well on dialup connections, but it's only an add-on for Firefox or Internet Explorer. I like to check the "Show unsafe/red URLs only" feature in "Options." III. Passive Spyware Blockers 1. SpywareBlaster is a very simple security program that helps block malicious content. For Firefox and many other browsers it mainly just blocks bad cookies from a list of specific sites. For Internet Explorer (IE) and browsers that use the IE engine it uses a list of restricted sites to block bad cookies, prevent the installation of activeX spyware, and prevent downloads/scripts/browser exploits (you can add to the list and remove websites from the restricted list). Opera is not currently supported. It has a few other security tweaks and features, such as a flash killer and system snapshot. 2-3. Advanced SystemCare and Spybot Search & Destroy have similar blocking features.
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This category is maintained by volunteer editor Rizar. Registered site visitors can contact Rizar by clicking here.
Tags for this page: Internet safety software, online safety, safe website check, site adviser.
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wot will not work with ie8...finjan does as does everything else I use...but not wot...tired of googling this problem looking for a fix. Consigning wot to the wood pile.
Hasn't anyone ever heard of Calling I.D.? A great freebie that actually saved my ass more than once. And not a word about it!
Strange software. None of the links on their support page are active and all of the other data relates to 2007 except for one press extract from this year. There is an email contact that appears live in another location but I think TSA would need to know much more about the status and projected future of this software before taking it any further.
I've sent a contact request via their page and will wait for a response. I'll report the result here and in the forum.
Thanks for highlighting this for us.
I think it deserves a second look. Just now I saw CallingID available for download on MajorGeeks. Seems like they have a new version out. I followed the link, and turns out that the software has got some excellent ratings on sites like FreewareFiles, and CNet, and others.
Further, apart from browsers, the software supports email clients, messengers, and MS office too.
Worth a look in my opinion.
Anupam Shriwatri
Regarding Finjan, as far as I can tell, it hasn't been updated since June of last year - a bit longer than I've been using it. Recently it has begun inserting junk text into Gmail:
http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?locale=fi&comments...
As a result, I have uninstalled it. That process, however, failed to remove the 300+ kb of its stuff in Firefox's prefs.js file which I ended up doing manually.
I have sent several emails to Finjan inquiring on both the Gmail issue and as to the addon's viability considering the lack of upgrades. The silence is deafening. Their Web site lists absolutely no version histories and except for copyright blurbs not one calendar date.
As far as I'm concerned, Finjan is dead and adrift in the water.
Darn, I'm good. Version 1.316 just showed up at their Web site, tho it's still 1.314 at addons dot mozilla dot org. However the updated 1.316 still injects junk into Gmail and uninstall still leaves a ton of stuff in prefs.js. Some update...
Which one of these slows down your browser the least?
I don't think any of these tools should slow down browsing, but some (such as LinkExtend) may take a bit longer to load the ratings.
Browser Defender is free and also offered as part of PC Tools package: http://www.browserdefender.com/
My impression, however, was that it slowed down browsing.
I use WOT and SpywareBlaster (in combination with antirvirus & antimalware software), would strongly recommend their use for all.
Avoid "McAfee SiteAdvisor". Why? "Some sites not rated (it claims to have rated 95% of the world wide web, though), some ratings may be outdated, many nags on install if you go for its secure search engine" and much more.
AVG LinkScanner is out!
http://linkscanner.avg.com/
Hi
AVG free also include this feaure, how does it compawe againt the others?
AVG uses Linkscanner. I think it's using the Pro version.
I updated the review for the new version of WOT, which now allows you to block websites without registering and simplified its warning screen.
I added a couple child safety mentions, esp. for Glubble, in the middle of the article. Glubble seems like a top-notch service, though for dialup users it loads way too slowly with all the graphics! I had to turn them off. And also it is too easy to get around since kids could just use a different browser. But I found myself endlessly clicking around many of the suggested sites! It's actually good for adults too!
And I added links for the safety ratings services that allow you to search their reports online from a search box. There is great variance in thoroughness with them, but LinkExtend also provides helpful links to those reports and a few others that don't have online search engines.
thak you very nice what are you talking about no i kid vary well done thanks
WWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW thats a long read but you have good points and such
Great article!
Thanks, very appreciated!
Woohoo! Now we can brag that we got two awards from Gizmo's - "Best Free Website Advisory or Blocker Software" AND "Best Internet Safety Check Freeware"!
Safe surfing,
Deborah
Web of Trust
totally
i agree we can
It's just the one! But WOT is also mentioned over at:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/how-to-secure-your-pc.php
WOT has also received some good press in the Windows Secrets newsletter:
Plus it is very fast for us who remain in the dark ages with dialup connections!
Comodo also has a Verification Engine, though, I believe it constantly runs in the tray.
http://www.vengine.com//
But it is another way to verify a site isn't scamming you.
Here is another security application by Comodo:
http://www.secure-email.comodo.com/index.html
It helps secure emails and ensure privacy.
Recently switched from SiteAdvisor to WOT myself on all three of my computers and really love the speed of the product as well as its detailed rating scales. From what I've read/heard elsewhere, WOT updates its site ratings and advisories more often and more quickly than SiteAdvisor has been doing, and it's already alerted me to a handful of sites that SiteAdvisor okayed just last week. Awesome product. Thank you Web of Trust.
We are honored and appreciative that you choose Web of Trust to receive the “Top Pick" award in the "Best Free Website Advisory or Blocker Software" category. Thank you for helping us to spread the word about WOT and to gather together an active community of people dedicated to making the Internet a safer place.
We also acknowledge the others on this list. They are all fine programs, and ultimately we are all working for the same goal. Congratulations to everyone and keep up the good work!
Safe surfing,
Deborah
Web of Trust
Thanks to you as well for a great product. As you see, I'm in the process of changing the title and location of the article.
Rizar
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