AVG offers free LinkScanner for real-time Web page scanning
AVG on Monday will begin offering a free version of its LinkScanner software, which offers real-time scanning of Web pages while surfing or doing Web searches.
LinkScanner, which is currently part of the AVG Free Edition suite, scans a Web page before a surfer visits the page and warns if the page appears to be unsafe.
AVG LinkScanner also offers safety rankings for all organic search results on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Safe pages in searches will have green check marks next to them and unsafe ones will have red "X"es and pop up windows offer more explanation.
AVG LinkScanner scans bookmarks as well as links in e-mails and instant messages before they are opened. Individual pages are scanned separately, so that if one page on a site like Facebook are spreading malware that page will prompt a warning and other pages on the site won't.
There is other software that flags malicious sites in searches. McAfee SiteAdvisor works with Yahoo search results and more than 20 other search engines and Symantec offers ratings on Ask while Google serves up its own warnings in its search results.
The news will be announced at the RSA 2009 security conference which starts on Monday.
AVG LinkScanner puts marks by search results that are unsafe and displays a pop up box with more information when the cursor hovers over the mark.
(Credit: AVG)
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
"McAfee Site adviser" works better for me
The Linkscanner component in AVG's anti-virus package has a troubled history. Less than a year ago it was flooding websites with fake traffic. Then last July, AVG was forced to stop this practice, but they still pretended to do the scanning because the little green check marks look so cool on the screen. Actually, all AVG was doing was the DNS lookup at that point, which kept the webmasters from complaining about the fake traffic.
But the question remains, "How do you do a good job of scanning websites if all you have is the IP address?" Many websites share the same IP address -- it's called "name-based hosting," and some of these sites may be dangerous while others are innocent. Google, for example, recognizes this, and its entire "safe browsing" database of malware sites is therefore based on the URL of the offending page, not the IP address.
For more background on this issue, visit a site that tracks AVG and Linkscanner: avg-watch.org
- by SysTech7 April 25, 2009 4:12 AM PDT
- Watch out...........It MAY do what it's supposed to do but it's reach is untethered. All of my browsers got stuck in first gear....It BLOCKS sites. I was unable (using IE 8, FF 3.09) to even LOAD Google and MANY other sites without warning.
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(14 Comments)A total mess.