You may have your anti-virus and malware removal tools programs installed, but they will not prevent you from clicking any of those potentially-harmful-but-so-interestingly-looking Twitter, Facebook or email links. Even if you have security toolbars and add-ons installed, the following online tools may help you find out whether a website really is safe, especially if you would like to get a second opinion (e.g. you suspect the site’s review hasn’t been updated) or if you decide that you don’t need more add-ons slowing your browser’s performance.

Want An Analysis Of A Website’s Safety? Try McAfee’s SiteAdvisor

When you first access McAfee’s SiteAdvisor, you may see more of SiteAdvisor’s software (a self-updating security toolbar that we covered before) than the web application that serves a similar purpose as the toolbar. Locate the textbox in the right sidebar under the heading of View a Site Report and enter your site’s URL.

Besides the big sticker at the beginning of the report, SiteAdvisor reports the website’s online affiliations and has numerous community member reviews/ratings. As if that’s not enough, you can also view a detailed analysis that SiteAdvisor offers on another page because this is a long list of the downloads it encountered on the submitted website. SiteAdvisor tests whether these downloads are crapware.

Norton’s SafeWeb

Norton’s SafeWeb initially provides a simple-looking site to check a website for threats. Upon displaying a site’s threat report, it shows a strong community presence in the form of reviews and ratings in the right sidebar. The actual Norton review starts with the green (site is safe), orange (caution is advised), red (unsafe site) or grey (untested) icon, followed by the threat report, that includes the results of 17 different malware tests. For certain sites, Norton’s SafeWeb also reports information of e-commerce safety (whether the site encrypts transactions and has a privacy policy).

Find more details on our SafeWeb article.

Want To Report A Suspicious Site? Jump to Phishtank!

Phishtank can help you decipher whether a site is phish which, according to the site, is a fraudulent attempt to steal the site visitor’s information. If you sign up to be a registered user, you can also submit a phishing site and also verify other users’ reported phishing sites.

Just Want To Know If A Site Is A Go Or No-Go?

If you are only interested in knowing whether a site is safe and want to skip the details of the analyses, Online Link Scan collects and summarizes the threat reports of the aforementioned Phishtank, AVG and Google Safe Browsing engines. It paints a clear and simple picture of whether a site is clean. What is not as simple are the number of ads surrounding the textbox and summary chart.

Relevant Bookmarklets & Addons

If you use Twitter constantly, then you probably get lots of shortened links to other sites. For your browser’s safety, you should check out our article on LongURLPlease’s bookmarklet and Firefox addon that reveals the location of shortened URLs. Also, check out these great Twitter tips to help your identity remain protected. If you’re more of an IM person, swing by our IM security hacks post.

If you often Google random topics, you may face a lot of new websites with promising names that sometimes sound too good to be true. If so, you may benefit from browser addons that will warn and stop you from entering potentially unsafe sites: AVG’s Linkscanner (browser addon that highlights potential threats) and WebOfTrust (featured along with eight, and ten other great security and privacy addons).

Do you know of another web app that scans sites for malware? Feel free to tell us in the comments.

Latest Article: How To Make An iPod Touch Or iPhone For Kids

There are tons of software packages out there that allow you to monitor and control your kids’ internet usage, but I have found none as complete and easy to use as OnlineFamily by Norton. It allows you to not only monitor what web sites your kids are visiting, but also limit their total computer time, restrict where they can go, supervise their social web site activities, and even protect their personal information. And the best part is that the interface is dead easy to use (even if you are technically challenged). If you sign-up now, you can get the service for free until January of 2010.

To get started, click here to sign up and download the software. After registering, you will be asked for the names and ages of each child you want to monitor.

Once you have setup the kids, you can download the software and install it on each of the machines you wish to monitor (don’t forget laptops). They provide both a Windows and a Mac version.

Installing it on the kids’ PC is quick and easy. If you have not already setup a separate user account for each kid and they all use the same machine, do this before you install the software. Unless they separate accounts, you will not be able to determine who did what.

When you install the software, it will ask you to specify how each family member logs in. If your kids all use the same PC, then you can use an Administrator account to install the software and select not to monitor that account. Each kid would then have a standard account and each of those will be monitored separately.

Once it is all setup, you can login to the service and start monitoring and managing your childrens’ activities. Keep in mind that there is a 5 to 10 minute delay between the time a web site is browsed on the kids PC and the activity shows up in your browser window. This one got me when I was testing to make sure it worked.

If you want, you can just use the default house rules, which seemed pretty good to me. Alternatively, you can use the Settings menu to define all sorts of rules specific to your situation. For example, you can specify who allowed to instant message your children. You can also monitor whether your child exposes sensitive information on social networking sites. And most importantly, you can choose the activities in which you want to be notified (by phone or email).

Norton provides a pretty thorough and useful help file which you can access online. This includes a nice video that you might want to check out, it may be found on the sign-up page.

Let us know if you tried Norton’s OnlineFamily and tell us what you think. Or let us know if you think any other online software tools are better.

So if you don’t want to risk shooting yourself in the foot (or somewhere a little more private) then you should check out Norton’s UAC Tool for free here.

If you are not familiar with Vista’s User Access Control ‘feature’ check out Wikipedia’s definition:

User Account Control (UAC) is a technology and security infrastructure introduced with Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. It aims to improve the security of Microsoft Windows by limiting application software to standard user privileges until an administrator authorizes an increase in privilege level. In this way, only applications that the user trusts receive higher privileges, and malware should be kept from receiving the privileges necessary to compromise the operating system. In other words, a user account may have administrator privileges assigned to it, but applications that the user runs do not also have those privileges unless they are approved beforehand or the user explicitly authorizes it to have higher privileges.

By disabling the UAC you also disable certain features that Norton makes use of. So Norton came out with a tool that makes you a little less likely to disable the UAC ‘feature’. Choose your location and start your download.

Next choose your version. x86 for 32 bit and the 64 for 64 bit. If you are unsure just grab the x86 file as seen below:

Next you will want to let it install and then enable it to replace the normal UAC pop-ups like seen below:

That’s all there is to it! Pretty simple huh? Check out what Norton has to say about their new Beta product:

The User Account Control tool has been designed to replace the Vista UAC, to simultaneously make your system more secure while significantly improving user-friendliness.

By default, any application launched by an administrator is running with a filtered, standard user access token. When the administrator attempts to perform a task, the UAC prompts the user to approve the action. This can lead to poor user experiences because the prompts can be slow to display, and appear frequently and without warning. What’s more, because the UAC may give a false sense of security since other processes can still access the desktop, it actually raises security concerns.

The net effect is that many users find the UAC security clearance and prompting process annoying, especially those who are a computer’s only user and have all the latest Norton Internet Security software installed and updated.

The User Account Control tool will collect user input as well as information on applications causing prompts. The data will be processed to improve the comprehensiveness and robustness of the white list, which will be updatable while running the tool online.

So in short by disabling the UAC you also disable certain features that Norton makes use of. So Norton came out with a tool that makes the UAC easier for you and computing safer for everyone. Wait a minute and it’s free….

Why is it free you might ask?

That is exactly what I was wondering so I decided to dive in a little deeper and check it out. It turns out Norton is willing to hook you up and remember your clicks, making that UAC prompt show up less in exchange for data.

They will collect information on how often and what causes your UAC to pop up. This time Norton sure showed Microsoft how it’s done! You can see from the pictures above and below HUGE improvements over the initial UAC interface.

(Above: New UAC From Norton Labs)

(Above: Old Microsoft UAC Interface.)

The best feature Straight from Norton’s Website:

Q: So… what does this replacement offer me?

A: Currently, the Norton Labs’ UAC replacement offers a “Do not ask me again” option on each prompt making it very easy for the user to squelch individual prompts without fully disabling UAC. Further, the Norton Labs’ UAC replacement displays the prompts in a slightly different way from how Microsoft chose to do it. We feel that our prompts provide a much clearer view of the ratings for the prompting application.

Wow this all looks almost too good to be true! So I went in and perused their privacy policy and everything seems to be on the up and up. This is a lot better than disabling UAC and safer than any of the registry hacks around. Way to go Norton!

How do you deal with the UAC? Are you disabling it, living with it or finding another way around it all together? Let us know in the comments!