When you browse the Internet and try to visit a new site, you’re not sure whether such site is safe to browse. There are many rogue sites on Internet that can spread viruses, malware and spyware. You have to be always cautious while visiting a new site that appears to be suspicious. If you have a doubt about the credentials of a particular website, it is always advisable to confirm beforehand whether that site is safe to visit. Google Safe Browsing is a free service that can advise you whether or not a particular site is safe to browse.
Google Safe Browsing uses automatic algorithms and user feedback for compiling lists of dangerous sites. It broadly covers two types of dangerous websites that are not safe to browse, namely phishing sites and malware sites. These lists are continuously updated by Google. While visiting pages of a website, Google keeps checking whether it hosts malware or has acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware. Google also keeps collecting information whether a particular website has been involved in any phishing attacks. When users find a particular website to be a dangerous site, they also provide feedback to Google in respect of the same. Due to these reasons, Google Safe Browsing will normally have up-to-date information about the credentials of a website as to whether or not it is safe to browse.
If a particular website or a web page asks you to provide your personal or financial information under false pretenses, purporting to be a site which it is not, it is called phishing or spoofing. In phishing, a web page will try to pose like another website such as banking website or credit card company’s website and the like. It will try to collect information from you that is your confidential or personal information, including your password, user name, credit card information or other financial information, pretending to be your banking site or credit card site, etc.
Malware is a program that tries to steal your personal information or tries to use your computer to do things that you don’t intend to do. A malware site is a website that contains malicious code which could get automatically downloaded and installed on your computer without your consent or without your knowledge. A malware can harm your computer in several ways.
(1) Open your browser. Enter or paste the following URL into the address bar of the browser:
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=example.com
In the above URL, replace “example.com” with the address of the website that you want to check whether it is safe for browsing or not. For example, if you want to check “microsoft.com”, the above URL will be like the following:
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=microsoft.com
(2) Now press Enter key. You will see recommendations from Google Safe Browsing in respect of the desired website. The recommendations will be in the following form (the actual results may vary depending upon the website for which you want to get the information; and moreover, the results may also change with time):
Zoom it: click here or on the image for enlarged view
So, try it yourself if you want to know whether a particular website is safe for browsing. However, please keep in mind that the recommendations made by Google Safe Browsing in its site diagnostic report cannot be perfect since it is possible that Google’s reports about a particular site are not updated till the last moment when you checked its recommendations. Therefore it is quite possible that in some cases, a safe site could be misidentified as a risky site, whereas a dangerous site is not shown as such and is rather projected as a safe site. However, most of the times, Google Safe Browsing will provide you the correct recommendations about the safety of visiting a particular site. You should also keep in mind that Google Safe Browsing recommends mainly about malware and phishing attacks; it may not provide information about viruses that they affect your computer. Therefore, you should not depend solely on Google’s advisory, but treat its advisory as one of the resources for deciding whether a particular website is safe to visit.
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