4 Ways to Identify Safe Websites on the Internet

On the whole Internet, there are approximately more than 150 million active websites up and running. As a result, it often becomes a real challenge for the users to identify safe websites that are trustworthy and reputed. Have you ever wondered to know the reputation of a website before placing the order? Need to know whether a given website is child safe? Well, here are some of the ways to identify safe websites on the Web.


1. WOT or Web Of Trust (www.mywot.com):

WOT is a great place to test the reputation of your favorite website. WOT gives real-time ratings for every website based on the feedback that it gets from millions of trustworthy users across the globe and trusted sources, such as phishing and malware blacklists. Each domain name is evaluated based on this data and ratings are applied to them accordingly.


When you enter the web address, a result will appear, the reputation of each website is shown in terms of 4 components where green means excellent, yellow warns users to be cautious and red indicates potential danger.


Trustworthiness signifies the overall safety of the website. A poor rating may indicate that the site is associated with threats like Internet scams, phishing, identity theft risks and malware. For more information on phishing, you may refer my other post on how to identify and avoid phishing scams.


Vendor reliability tells you whether a given site is safe for carrying out buy and sell transactions with it. An excellent rating indicates superior customer satisfaction while a poor rating indicates possible scam or bad shopping experience.


Privacy indicates about “to what extent the site respects the privacy of it’s users and protects their personal identity and data”.


Child Safety indicates whether the content of a given site is appropriate for children. Site contents like sexual material, nudity and vulgarity will have a poor Child Safety rating.


In most cases, the WOT ratings are found to be highly accurate. To check the reputation of any given website, just visit www.mywot.com type-in the address of your favorite website and click on “Check now”. This tool alone can tell you a lot about the reputation and safety level of a website. However, in addition to this, I am giving you another 3 handy tools to identify safe websites on the Web.


2. McCafee SiteAdvisor:

McCafee SiteAdvisor is a free tool that is available as a browser add-on. It adds safety ratings to your browser and search engine results. You can download it from www.siteadvisor.com.


3. StopBadware:

Using this tool, you can check whether a given site is said to have involved in malware activity in the past. To check this, go to http://www.stopbadware.org/home/reportsearch and enter the URL or domain name of a website and click on “Search Clearinghouse ”. If the search does not return any result, that means the site was never involved in any of the malware activity in the past.


4. Google Pagerank:

Google PageRank is another great tool to check the reputation and popularity of a website. The PageRank tool rates every webpage on a scale of 1 to 10 which indicates Google’s view of importance of the page. If a given website has a PageRank of less than 3, then it is said to be less popular among the other sites on the Internet.


However, PageRank will only tell you how much popular a given website is and has nothing to do with the safety level of a website. So, this tool alone cannot be used to evaluate a website’s safety and other factors.


PageRank feature is available as a part of Google Toolbar. You can install Google Toolbar from http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/toolbar/ie/index.html.

Do you know how to test you Anti-Vrus Software?

Have you ever wondered how to test your Antivirus software to ensure it’s proper working? Well here is a quick and easy way to test your antivirus. The process is called EICAR test which will work on any antivirus and was developed by European Institute of Computer Antivirus Research. This process can be used by people, companies and antivirus programmers to test the proper functioning of the antivirus/antimalware software without having to deal with the real computer virus which can cause damage to the computer. Here is a step-by-step procedure to test your antivirus.

1. Open a notepad (New Text Document.TXT) and copy the following code exactly onto it, and save the notepad.

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

2. Rename the file from New Text Document.TXT to myfile.com

3. Now run the antivirus scan on this myfile.com file.

If the antivirus is functioning properly on your computer, then it should generate a warning and immediately delete the file upon scanning. Otherwise you may have to re-install your antivirus.
NOTE: Most antivirus will pop-out a warning message in the Step-1 itself

You can also place the myfile.com file in a ZIP or RAR file and run a scan on it so as to ensure whether your antivirus can detect the test string in the compressed archive. Any antivirus when scanning this file will respond exactly as it will do for a genuine virus/malicious code. This test will cause no damage to your computer even though the antivirus will flag it as a malicious script. Hence it is the safest method to test the proper functioning of any antivirus.

What computer users should know, but don't.

Following is a list of what I think is the absolute minimum a computer user should know to be able to keep their machine running as problem free as possible. I would also say that most of, if not all of, these things are not followed by the majority of people.



Know your operating system. Knowing what operating system and version you have is a great help for when you have problems and need outside help. It also helps for when you wish to install programs so you can choose the correct one for your operating system.
Know your file system. It is all very well to create files but if you do not know where those files are saved, or how to look for them, then you will have problems. You will also need to know which files are yours and which ones are required for the operating system. Just deleting files you don't know about to create space will also create major headaches.
Perform regular operating system maintenence. This can include things like defragmenting the hard disk or scanning for malware, cleaning out temporary files or internet caches and removing old unused programs.
Understand how to install programs. Every computer you purchase, beg, borrow or steal (just kidding) will need to have some programs installed on it. If you don't understand (notice I didn't use the word know) how programs are installed and where they go you can open a world of woe.
Regularly update installed programs. Most programs nowdays have some sort of update mechanism. These need to be used and taken notice of when updates are available. Computer updates fix bugs and security problems and help keep the computer running smoothly.
Read and understand messages and alerts shown by the computer.These messages and alerts are not just something to be clicked away and discounted. They are shown for a reason and could very well save your bank account from being syphoned off to an account in Nigeria.
Talk the talk. I don't mean be able to state how many nibbles there are in a byte or mix with ease in a Star Trek convention. You do need to know the difference between a cup holder and a CDROM drive tray. Apart from the hardware names you should also know terminology specific to the software you are using. This helps you understand when help is offered and also enables you to convey your difficulties in an intelligent manner.
Read The Fine Manuals. Or as is most often the case, the help files which come with any professionaly designed program. They are there for a purpose, to enable you to effectively use the program and give you the biggest bang for your buck so to speak. By reading the manuals or help files you can understand features which can save you many hours of wasted time. We all know time is money right? :)
Take appropriate security measures. Lets face it. You have something which a lot of people want. Your identity. As the time of the Borg is not yet here and you have not been assimilated you need to protect your identity, money and even your life. This means ensuring you have the appropriate and up to date malware protection as well as some basic security measures like not using the administrative (or root) account for general computing use.



As you can see it is a very short list. Using a computer is not hard and getting even easier with every new operating system being released. To be able to keep using that computer as it was designed to be used then I believe the above list is an absolute must. Unfortunately, much to the chagrin of those who service computers, these things are not even remotely followed by the general public. Who's fault is that? What do you think needs to be added or removed from the list?

What makes a good IT professional

The world of IT is large. In it there are a lot of different types of people. Some are good, some are bad, some are mediocre and some are brilliant. Although I like to think I am one of the brilliant ones I am sure that others will disagree. So what separates the good from the bad.

Everybody has different reasons to get into IT and there are too many to list so I am not going to get into it. One thing the best IT professionals have in common is a passion for their work. To them it is not work but a way of life. They eat, live and breathe IT, especially the particular facet they specialize in. To them eight hours in front of a computer is not enough. It is not just work it is a knowledge base, it is entertainment, it is relaxation, it is life! A reason for living, a thing of excitement where change is welcome and advances in technology are eagerly awaited.

But that in itself does not make a good IT professional. The one thing that I would say is most important. The only thing that leaps the dividing line from the good and the bad is the ability to solve problems. Our profession is usually a case of one problem after another that needs to be solved. This continuous problem solving, often the same problems over and over again with minor variations that are enough to make it interesting, are what gives us our zest for the industry.

However just being able to solve problems is not enough. The speed at which we can solve problems is most important. A common saying in business is that time is money. What this translates to is pressure on us to solve the problem in the smallest amount of time. Generally the bigger the problem, the less time we have to solve it and an exponential amount of pressure from the higher ups to find that solution. This means that often to find a solution we not only have to think logically but also laterally. About ninety nine percent of solutions to our problems can be found on the Internet, unless we have some new technology that is hot out of the factory, so the better we can search on the Internet the quicker we can find solutions to our problems.

That is what makes a good IT person. Not willingness, although that does play a big part in learning to become a good IT person. Not intelligence as some people can be very intelligent at some things but totally brain dead in other areas. Not perseverance as even though it will find the answer in the end it can be too late. No it is the ability to research and solve problems in the quickest amount of time. That ability can be learned or it can come naturally but it is a needed ability to make you a good IT professional.

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