internet

Unfortunately, not all Internet sites are created equal, some will swamp you with spam or deluge you with dodgy downloads - the problem is telling the good ones from the bad and, of course, doing so before you go there!

Siteadvisor is free, in its standard form, and uses real people, as well as machines, to test a whole bunch of websites and report on the problems that you can find on your visit.  It works inside your browser (versions are available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox but not yet for Opera and Safari) and offers excellent information as you search.

Here is an example of a search page using Google (it works for Yahoo and MSN, too) that contains only sites it considers safe, note the green ticks at the end of each entry.  If you hover the mouse over the entry, it will tell you a little more about the site in a pop-up dialog.

Contrast this with a page of a different search where the search page shows a red cross against some sites and the dialog reveals why they are unsafe.  As well as green and red there is an intermediate stage of yellow which indicates caution and, again, a dialog shows you why.

Basically, sites are judged on the quality of the links and downloads, whether you are likely to get a dose of malware or even a virus for your trouble and also if you are likely to get spammed.

Hovering over an entry on a search page brings a dialog on which you can select to get more information and this reveals a page devoted to that site.  For example, it shows the email tests done, with results, as well as information on the download links.  There is also a diagram showing the general links found on the site and colours indicate the ranking that siteadvisor has given to these sites, giving you the opportunity to judge the site for yourself.

So how does this work in practice?  The vast majority of people, I am sure, will simply avoid sites that are yellow or red unless there is a good reason to go there, thus decreasing the traffic to those sites and prompting them to clean up their act.  The system, it says, is dynamic in that a site can ask to be checked again and its rating changed if it is found appropriate.

So is this good software?  I can't help feeling that any software that sits in judgment of websites has a very hard job to get it right 100% of the time.  Siteadvisor is good, but it is only a tool for us to use to help keep us safe on the Internet and, as such, it needs to be used carefully and its recommendations thought of as recommendations and not out and out rules telling us not to visit.

I am sure this area will provoke comment so please tell us your experiences using siteadvisor below and, in particular, if you avoid going to sites that are flagged as red.

Tags: browsing, internet, security