[Daily Tip]: How to Know if a Website is Safe Before Visiting

Another quick tip for everyone today. The Internet can be a dangerous place. Cyber-criminals are getting smarter; the tools they use to infect other systems are becoming more sophisticated. You’ll want to do everything in your power to protect yourself. Active X Blockers, virus scanners, and ad blockers are just the tip of the iceberg. What if you want to check a page before visiting it – determine if a threat is there before exposing yourself to it? Sure, you could just run a Google search and look for a notification – but those aren’t always updated in real-time.

What you’re going to want to use is a website scanning tool, such as AVG’s Online Web Page Scanner, Scan URL, or Virus Total. Granted, none of them are 100% guaranteed to detect any unwanted guests on whatever page you happen to submit, but better safe than sorry, right?

The best part about these tools is that they can also be used to scan individual files – so if you happen to come across a suspicious download, you can scan it before you infest your computer with a virus.

 

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4 comments

  1. Great tip. Thanks.

  2. Just use properly enabled Comodo Dragon browser & forget about the rest.

  3. Al Brown /

    A good, free anti-virus program like Avast Free has a web site scanner “Web shield” which can block bad site, best free program out there, “Spywareblaster” from folks at JavaCoolSoftware will guard and protect from hijacks and blocks known bad sites (currently protects from 15,678 sites or bad guys). And finally, “WOT” for Web of Trust, will rate sites and can also prevent you from even going to a known malware site… again a superb and free download….. I stay far away from the nearly useless AVG AV programs which continually rates at the low end of quarterly tests by independent AV-Comparatives evaluations and testing of AV programs. One can over-ride the blockage of a bad site by WOT, but does so at own risk….

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