Today I searched my own blog address in Google to view websites which have linked to it. To my surprise, from the result pages I found someone has scanned my site with McAfee SiteAdvisor for potential spyware or other potentially unwanted programs, not quite the search result I expected I’d say.
The security report stated that mine was safe from threats though there are annoyances reported which cannot be avoided when you have ads in your blog.
So out of curiousity I checked out other website scanning report, such as download.com we all visit. Oddly, there are some programs offered to be download at download.com reported to contain viruses and spyware which were detected by the site advisor. Wow! software downloads at download.com are not safe?
The similar result received by softpedia.com which claim to be free from threats for their software downloads.
A Softpedia staff replied to the matter by stating that they cannot control software developers who updated their listing by not informing them the changes of their software.
:::Solution:::
A commenter replied to the issue suggesting people to scan for the software developer homepage instead to detect for potential threats before downloading the software they desire. A smart move indeed!
::Internet Browsers Integration::
Apparently, there are internet browsers implementation developed by McAfee for the site advisor utility and they are free. Now you can be informed of dangerous websites all the time while browsing the internet. Visit siteadvisor.com to scan websites for unwanted threats and equip your computer with the security tool.
May 29th, 2008 at 8:15 am
I thank you for this timely advise. I was just about to renew my antivirus software and have asked for doing this before installation.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:42 am
I just looked at your website reputation scorecard from Web of Trust and it looks clean there too.
On the download.com scorecard there are many comments about how useful the site is, but three WOT users have made comments warning against malware of different varieties.
Check out the Web of Trust demo and their online rating system. http://www.mywot.com/en/demo
May 30th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Thanks for the info Deborah.
June 4th, 2008 at 12:58 am
The web of trust is what is needed nowadays, given the potential viruses and spy ware all over the net.
June 4th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
After upgrading to KAV it started picking up a lot of trojans Norton used to miss out. Only shows how much Norton sucks. I think KAV is less time consuming than scanning every page before you visit it.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Siteadvisor site seems to be extremely busy. It is quite difficult to get on to the site. Thanks however for the information.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Thank for infrmation! It very usefull!
June 25th, 2008 at 10:08 am
In my opinion one should really study first a particular software before downloading it. Most of the freewares carry bots and adware.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Thanks for the tips. Usually i never find out i have a virus until it’s too late