How to avoid the worst of the Internet

A few years ago I went to a Microsoft developer's conference in Hamburg. After supper a colleague and I went wandering about the centre of the city. There were lots of people about and it felt quite safe. After a while we found ourselves in a much quieter street. Suddenly we were alone. After a few seconds we looked at each other and beat a hasty retreat back to the main streets. We had simultaneously developed a VERY uncomfortable feeling which only faded when there were lots of people about.

The Internet is a bit like being in a strange city: most is totally harmless, some you wouldn't want to visit on your own and some is REALLY, REALLY dangerous. The big trouble is it can be hard to tell which is which.

There is a wonderful utility that I install on most computers that I see called SiteAdvisor: www.siteadvisor.com.

What the engine behind SiteAdvisor does is to patrol the Web to browse sites, download files and enter information on sign-up forms. The downloaded files are then analysed to see if they contain any malware. All well and good you say but how does that help.

The SiteAdvisor add-in, which works in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, summarises the safety results into red, yellow and green ratings which are displayed in search results in both Google and Yahoo. There is also a SiteAdvisor toolbar which changes colour according to the rating of the site you are currently visiting.

SiteAdvisor is not perfect. Nothing ever is. A site rated green may have been compromised since its last rating for example. Also a site may not have been rated yet. But as a general rule of thumb green sites should be OK, avoid red sites like the plague and exercise caution with yellow sites.

Originally developed by a group of MIT engineers starting in April 2005 McAfee bought SiteAdvisor in April 2006.

I nearly forgot the best bit: It's free.

There is a paid version which has a couple of extra features which are well worth having to protect children and teenagers. Perhaps I should say it protects your computer from the activities of children and teenagers. The paid version currently costs $9.99 for one computer for a year and only $19.99 for three computers.

For me this is a must have utility. It should be for you too.

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