This morning, I received my normal weekly newsletter from download.com. I get a lot of these types of newsletters to help keep me up to date with various aspects of technology for my own blog. Today's newsletter was about a product called SiteAdvisor that is a free add-on for my Firefox Web browser.
It sounded so go I decided to try it myself. And it was all that was advertised. SiteAdvisor protects you against dangerous web sites. They have a database of well over a million web sites that rates them according to safety, spyware, unwanted e-mails, and other items. It puts a little button on the bottom right of your browser that changes colors, depending on the Web site you visit. If you want to know more about the site, you can click on the button and their testing information pops up.
What's more, when you do a Google or Yahoo search, each web site listed on the search is rated for safety. It is definitely a tool you should have on your browser. If you use Firefox, you need to get this free plugin.
What follows is an excerpt from the Download.com newsletter written by Brian Satterfield that explains in more detail what Siteadvisor does.
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I recently came across another weapon in the war against spyware that's so useful I can't help myself from telling you about it.
In this era of drive-by installs and unannounced browser hijacks, surfing the Web can seem like tiptoeing across a minefield: one wrong step, and you've got serious problems. For the past couple of years, I have been hoping someone would develop a tool that tests Web sites for potential safety issues, so when I found a Firefox plug-in called SiteAdvisor, I was excited. Even better, once I started testing it this tiny add-on actually exceeded my expectations, which is rare.
The short story on SiteAdvisor is that it gives you the dirt on more than a million Web sites. Its test bots constantly check sites to see whether they send unsolicited e-mail, bury users under a blanket of pop-ups, and--perhaps most importantly--contain software that could compromise your privacy. Whenever you visit a URL, SiteAdvisor's browser icon flashes one of three colors: green (safe), yellow (caution), or red (extreme caution). Then, with a couple clicks, you can head to SiteAdvisor's home page for more detailed information. According to the company, about 90 percent of the sites tested so far have scored a green rating, whereas only 5 percent haved earned the red flag for bad behavior. My favorite part about the plug-in is that it rates sites directly from search engines such as Yahoo and Google, which reduces your chances of falling victim to a drive-by install.
It appears Download.com visitors are just as enthusiastic about the program as I am: SiteAdvisor netted more than 7,000 downloads in its first week on the site and has garnered consistently high user reviews. Look for the program's official launch March 1, which promises a number of enhancements over the already impressive beta version.
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