CyberNotes: Secure Browsing Tools and Extensions for Firefox and IE

Web Browser Wednesday

There is so much junk going around the Internet these days that it is becoming increasingly difficult for users to browse the Web securely. Last year we wrote about 10 great Firefox extensions that will not only keep you secure, but also help you maintain your privacy. This time around we have 4 more tools that a user has submitted, and some work for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

You’ll notice that three of the four tools are all similar to the McAfee SiteAdvisor that we mentioned in our previous article, but the purposes they each serve are very important. Not only that but each of them has their own unique benefits so we felt it necessary to mention each of them.

—LinkScanner for Firefox & IE (Homepage)—

It does what search engines should already be doing for us, and that is scanning results and marking which ones might be potentionally malicious.

It does have one other feature that is pretty cool, and that is the ability to scan links on-demand. You can right-click on any link and it will quickly analyze it for anything that is out of the ordinary. It will then let you know what the result is.

There is also a professional version of LinkScanner available for $19.95 per year that goes beyond just your browser. It actually works with your firewall to monitor traffic, which means you are even protected when reading email!

—Finjan SecureBrowsing for Firefox & IE (Homepage)—

This tool also checks hyperlinks to see if the resulting page is safe or not, but it is a little different in how it works. Finjan actually scans the content of each page looking for content that could end up harming your PC. Unlike other software alternatives this scanning process is done in real-time and is not based solely on a database of blacklisted URL’s.

Finjan will scan search results and even advertisements and warn you about any potentially malicious content that is found. A green result means that the content is clean, yellow means the site was unavailable to scan, and red means that the site is not safe.

—TrendProtect for Firefox & IE (Homepage)—

This tool will automatically scan the page that you have open in the browser, as well as search results from Google, MSN, and Yahoo. It will place an icon next to each of the results so that you can quickly identify the good and bad sites.

One of the things that is cool with TrendProtect is that you can configure some of the options, such as whether to highlight the search results links or whether to display the advice baloon when you hover of the icon. You can also manage the trusted pages and configure a few advanced options.

In the balloon you’ll find information regarding the site along with an option to scan your computer or whitelist the page.

—Firekeeper for Firefox (Homepage)—

This is a Firefox extension that is still in the early stages of development. However, it is still an effective solution at sniffing for malicious code on the websites that you visit. When malicious code is found, you will quickly be prompted with information regarding the problem. You’ll also be given some references so that you can read up on why the code was determined to be malicious as well as options to blacklist or whitelist the site.

If you have problems downloading the extension, use these download links: Windows and Linux.

—Overview—

Security is pretty important to me, and tools like these could save me a lot of headaches from having to fix computers for people who unknowingly visit these malicious sites. If you have any security tools that you find useful please let us know in the comments below!

Thanks to “s” and “C” for the tips!