I've used the WOT (Web Of Trust) extension for Firefox for over a year now and it's been very effective. You'd be surprised how how easy it is to be fooled by legitimate looking websites. The WOT extension monitors links and automatically blocks sites that are considered dangerous. You can override the blocked website on an individual basis. It also provides ratings on search results and Wikipedia links. They recently also published a list of the Top 50 Dangerous Websites.
WOT Home page
In a related item, the McAfee Site Advisor has a spam quiz. Can you tell which sites are safe and which ones will sell your email address? Try it here.
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If you want to test how how good you are at figuring out if a website is risky or safe, try the Web of Trust Challenge in Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/wotchallenge/
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Esa
Dear Joe Mama,
ReplyDeleteI wanted to let you know that Web of Trust is nearing the April 24th release date for WOT version 3. If you are interested in receiving the "first look" at the new WOT Website Reputation Scorecard, I can include you in the selected group of people who can access version 3 material and test drive the beta version. Please let me know if you are interested (by Friday, April 11) by email or telephone.
As you already know Web of Trust (WOT) is an innovative people-driven security tool that warns Internet users about dangerous and suspicious websites. WOT is a new up-and-comer in the Internet security space with hundreds of thousands of users and 18 million rated websites. The system determines the reputation rating for each website based on input given by individual users and information the system aggregates from trusted sources, such as phishing site listings.
I hope to hear from you.
Best regards,
Deborah Salmi
www.MyWOT.com
Against Intuition Inc.
Itälahdenkatu 27 A
00210 Helsinki, Finland
email: deborah (at) mywot (dot)com
twitter:diverdeb
Dear Joe Mama,
ReplyDeleteYou have probably heard about software tools that offer free scanning of your PC and reports fake errors to make you buy the product. We decided to test one of these products, PC Doc Pro. We produced a video that shows you, in practice, what happened: http://www.mywot.com/en/online-threats/fraudulentsite
We started with a clean install of Windows Vista Ultimate. PC Doc Pro scanned the system and found 572 problems, out of which 31 were severe! The product fixes 50 problems for free, but to fix the rest, you need to buy a 30-day license that costs $29.95.
This is a good example of software that scares consumers by producing false detection warnings. Misleading unaware computer users into downloading and paying for the “full” version of bogus software is an emerging trend within the rogue software.
This type of scam cannot be detected by traditional security software, since the website doesn’t necessarily spread malware that anti-virus or anti-spyware systems would notice. Preventive protection against fraudulent sites is provided by reputation based systems such as Web of Trust.
Best regards,
Deborah
Web of Trust
http://www.mywot.com/