Test where you are going - Before you go

With all the websites flying around asking you to watch this video, or donate to this fund, it becomes more important to be able to distinguish the good from the bad. We touched on some of the pitfalls of clicking around earlier last week.



That being said there is something easy that you can do before you go to an unknown site, and actually it wouldn't hurt to check known sites as well - better safe than sorry right? Norton has a way to check the rating of a site called Norton Safe Web. You simply enter the address in question and you get information about the site - good, bad, or not rated.

This check provides you with a history of any threats the site has shown such as; viruses, drive-by downloads, malicious downloads, worms, spyware, and remote access software to name a few. With that information in hand you now you have a good idea about the site before you have entered and made your system vulnerable.

Another way to be sure of a site that you have found yourself on is with Flagfox. This addon will give you site safety and malware checks, and a flag of the country that the server is located in. This is valuable for many reasons but for the sake of this article, you get to make a determination about the country in which you are being routed, and whether or not it has a 'bad' history for users that find themselves there.

I also would like to add VirusTotal to the article, which is another useful tool that you can check suspicious files and URLs, and also detect viruses, worms, and trojans in a quick and efficient manner.

These are just a few tools in a ever expanding arsenal that will help keep your system safe.