How to be Websmart

What to do

1. We recommend you download Firefox with the Google Toolbar.

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(If you want to know more about what Firefox is, read our Firefox Explained article.)

1. Using Firefox, come back to this article. Then click here to get the free McAfee SiteAdvisor. Click on the orange ‘Download SiteAdvisor for Firefox’ to install the plug-in. Once it has installed, close Firefox and restart the browser.

2. From now on, to more safely surf the web, use the Firefox browser with the Google toolbar and McAfee SiteAdvisor.

A little more

Each of these tools protects you while you surf, albeit in different ways:

Firefox

Firefox is a browser – it is a program you use to surf the web. You may currently use Internet Explorer (which you access by double clicking on the blue ‘e’ on your desktop).

Firefox has a lot of great features – in terms of security, Firefox helps protect you against spyware, worms, and viruses while your surf. You can learn more about Firefox by reading our Firefox Explained Article or visiting the Mozilla Firefox website.

Google Toolbar

In terms of security, the Google Toolbar helps protect you against ‘phishing’ or ’spoofing’ sites. Phising sites are sites that try to get your personal information (for example, like credit card details) by pretending to be legitimate businesses.

The Google Toolbar helps protect you against these sites by warning you if a webpage you are viewing is a potential phising site.

To learn more about the Google Toolbar, click here.

To learn more about phising, you can read the Wikipedia Article on the topic.

McAfee SiteAdvisor

McAfee SiteAdvisor is brought to you by the McAfee, a company most famous for it’s antivirus software.

McAfee maintains a database of sites it has tested for various dangerous things. McAfee tests sites in four main ways:

• Spam/Email Messages – If a website solicits email addresses in any way, SiteAdvisor submits a test email, and then tracks how many emails the website sends out a month.

• Downloads – SiteAdvisor checks to see if any downloads offered by a site are safe. It tests to see if the downloads are spyware, malware, adware, or other harmful programs for your computer.

• Annoyances – SiteAdvisor tests the site for pop-ups and other annoying aspects of website.

• Linked Sites – SiteAdvisor also tests to see whether the other sites the target site links to are safe.

McAfee then records this information in a database – SiteAdvisor allows you to basically see the results of McAfee’s tests when you search the web.

If you use Google, MSN, or Yahoo to search the web, SiteAdvisor places a small mark next to each search result. The mark tells you if the website is safe (with a green check mark), if you should use caution (with a yellow exclamation point), if there is a serious warning with that site (with a red X), or if McAfee has yet to test the site (with a grey question mark). You can roll your mouse over the mark to get a quick summary of McAfee’s results for a site.

SiteAdvisor is a lot easier to show than explain. If you have Firefox and SiteAdvisor installed, using Firefox, search for ’screensaver’ here at Google to see some examples of sites SiteAdvisor warns people about.

SiteAdvisor also puts a small alert icon in the bottom right hand corner of your browser. The icon changes color according to how safe McAfee feels the current page you are looking at is (green = safe, yellow = cautious, red = warning). If the icon is grey, that is because SiteAdvisor has not reviewed that site yet.

To learn more about how SiteAdvisor protects you, click here.

By using the combination of three items above, you can more safely surf the web.

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