To help protect your machine against phishing, spyware, malware, etc, there are many tools that could help. The first step is to install an antivirus program and an Internet Safety software from major security vendors (e.g Symantec, McAfee and Kaspersky, just to name a few).
For your web browsing protection, the first line of defense is to be carefull and check out the reputation of a site before downloading anything or give up your credit card number! Be careful not to download FREE antispyware which turns out be an actual SPYWARE. There are plently of them.
How do you get some help on this task? Well, there are many tools available. The one that I would strongly recommend you to use are : Web Of Trust, McAfee SiteAdvisor and Alexa page rank.
Why these three?
Because when you combine the three togerther, you get a very good picture of the reputation of a site.
Here’s the links to the download page for all three tools:
- Link to Web Of Trust download page;
- Link to McAfee SiteAdvisor download page; and
- Link to Alexa Page Rank toolbar download page.
I would strongly suggest that you download and install all three tools to protect and help you while you browse the web. The incovenient with these tools, firstly, they are not supported on Google Chrome. Secondly, when using all three togerther, it slows down your web browsing experience. Thirdly, you will need to install them on all supported browsers (Firefox and Internet Explorer).
The alternative is to use another web browser technology called bookmarklet that requires no download. they are simple browser bookmark made of javascript (an applet, a little program stored as an URL). To install, you just drag and drop the bookmarklet link into your browser toolbar. The inconvenient with bookmarklet is that you have to click on them to execute the program.
The following are bookmarklets we provided to for FREE. To install these programs, just drag buttons to your browser toolbar. As simple as that, no need for any download.
Bookmarklet to display Web Of Trust about risky web site based on users recommendations:
WebOfTrust It!
Bookmarklet to display McAfee Site ranking (help tell about virus/spyware/etc):
SiteAdvisort It!
Bookmarklet to display Amazon Alexa Page of a site (give you hindsight on popularity of a site):
TrafficRank It!
How to use it?
Go to any site and just click on the bookmarklet buttons (inside your browser toolbar).
Disclaimer
We do not claim any ownership of the actual tools underneath the bookmarklet. Our bookmarlet is simply a javascript that opens the tools provided by WOT, SiteAdvisors and Alexa. The bookmarklet does not make any modification to the original page. Use them at your own risk. These tools are not tested yet againts IE. It works on Firefox and Chrome. You could use/copy/distribute the code without any restrictions.
/David
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