Electronic lifestyle: searching safely if your defense software could be better

Self-tutoring about the electronic lifestyle and internet safety: the tutor mentions a way to check a site before you go there.

The other day it happened again: I was referred, by an academic search, to a site so obscure, the main computer, protected under Norton 360, simply refused to go there. I thought the site was safe, so what to do?

I switched to this other computer, which is a minesweeper (see my post from June 20): it’s got nothing sensitive on it, nor is it ever used for anything sensitive. Yet, its malware protection is only Windows Defender, nothing more. Therefore, it’s less protected than the others: I don’t want to bring it willy-nilly-anywhere, because it could get infected. Therefore, I asked out to the Internet what to do.

I don’t know if God was listening, but I got suggested, by AVG, to check out Google Safe Browsing. You can type, or paste, a url in its box, and it will check that site’s safety for you.

I immediately tested it on the obscure site – it was safe.

BTW: The Google utility where I typed the url in a searchbox to check its safety seems to call itself “Google Transparency Report”.

Source:

avg.com

transparencyreport.google.com