The internet is forever expanding with many new sites appearing every day. For novices it can be quite scary, trying to find their way around avoiding untrustworthy sites. Even for more seasoned users, many get fooled into being directed to innocent sounding sites only to find that they are malicious in intent or full of porn.
Okay, so you can control what sites children visit using parental controls, but how many parents pro-actively oversee their children when they are online?
Child
There are programs like Linkscanner, or AVG's built in Linkscanner Toolbar that many find obtrusive, but these tools give you an indication of whether a site is trusted, but what about child safety, links in emails, links on blogs and other websites.
Now there is a new tool for all users which is community driven and rates sites on standards of trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety. Once installed as a small BHO, it will place a safety rating on search engine searches and also checks links in emails. This takes it further up the ladder aimed at improving online safety for all users.
This is the first community driven source where people can help each other by taking an active part.
The biggest threats come from adult orientated sites with malicious coding that will install adware, spyware, trojans, BHO's and more specifically phishing. Identity theft and identity fraud are on the increase, so tools like this help to create a greater awareness as well as offering better child protection, which is often overlooked.
Other dangerous sites that are frequented by children are those that offer cheap software, music downloads and video games and of course, some of the social networks.
It is too easy to search for well known brands whose names have been hijacked by unscrupulous webmasters, only to find that when you arrive at the site it is adult related, or a drive-by site which will compromise your computers security.
It has also created a more friendly version for colorblind users, an innovation in itself and a great benefit to many people.
Web of Trust is Your Community
Colin Richards
Free PC Security
http://cotojo.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/web-of-trust-is-your-community