Technofriends

With the growing roots of malwares and spywares, its important for you as a end user to know and understand the importance of the webpage you are either being redirected to, or will be taken to when you click on the link someone sent you over the email or just the link address you got in an online or offline advertisement.

In this article, i will publish a few online tools which you can use to check ” How Safe is the Webpage you intend to visit”.

1.) AVG Web Page Scanner : The AVG LinkScanner® Drop Zone lets you check the safety of individual web pages you are about to visit. You may have received a suspicious link in an e-mail — just copy the URL (web page address) and drop it into the box on the website. LinkScanner® will examine the web page in real time to see whether it’s hiding any suspicious downloads. Even innocent web sites can contain hidden “drive-by downloads”. ( AVG Web Page Scanner)

2.) Unmask Parasites : Unmask Parasites crawls through the link you enter into the input box provided at the website and determines if the webpage is linking to any malware provider. The tool is primarily marketed as a tool for Webmasters, but its equally useful for an end user as well.( Unmask Parasites)

This was about checking if the webpages are safe or not, however, its possible that your computer is already infected with the malware and spywares. In order to stay safe, following are some of the tips and tricks you can make use of

1.) Always have a good anti-virus software installed.

If you use Windows, you can try out Microsoft’s free anti-virus software, Microsoft Security Essentials ( Read about it in my post here ). You can even choose to use one of the best free antivirus software , Panda Cloud Antivirus, BitDefender 10 Free Edition (2009). Whatever Antivirus software you choose, ensure that you get real time protection as well and that your virus definitions are up-to-date. Having up-to-date virus definitions help you stay on top of threats and virus attacks.

2.) Exercise caution in the online world

Whenever you’re prompted to download an email attachment, follow an instant message link, install a plug-in, or download an unfamiliar piece of software, use the websites listed above to scan the link before going ahead.

3.) Have a good Firewall installed

Having a good firewall software which can scan both outgoing and incoming packets in real-time can prove really useful.

Also, its important to know that many computer security vendors offer free computer security checks for your computer. You can visit any of the links listed at www.staysafeonline.org/content/free-security-check-ups to check your computer for known viruses, spyware, and more and discover if your computer is vulnerable to cyber attacks.

If required, you can even stop your browser from automatically redirecting to other websites. You can read my post [How-To] Stop Automatic Redirects To Other Websites with Firefox 3 to learn about the steps involved in the same.

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