How To Tell If A Website Is Dangerous

[Guest]

[Chiron]

If you would like to find out whether a website is dangerous or not please follow the advice I give in my article:
How to Tell If A Website Is Dangerous

If anyone has any comments you can either leave them on that site or below. Either way I'll respond to any comments and consider your suggestions for future changes.

Thanks.

[Chiron]

Bump.

[Radaghast]

Another useful post Chiron 

I'm not a big fan of community based assessment tools like WOT, as the results can be wildly off. However, for those who like these sorts of things, if you use firefox with noscript, you can middle-click on a site, blocked by noscript, and be taken to the selection in the image.

[Chiron]

Bump.

Does anyone have any new suggestions? Most importantly, I'm looking for an alternative to LegitScript.

[ranget]

How about scanning it on VT

[Chiron]

That's already mentioned under Check Site Through URLVoid.

I didn't give it it's own section because I consider it to be a very similar approach to using URLVoid.

[SiberLynx]

That's already mentioned under Check Site Through URLVoid.
I didn't give it it's own section because I consider it to be a very similar approach to using URLVoid.

Hi Chiron ,

Sure , but despite the "similarities" it would be worth mentioning the convenience/advantages of using VTzilla - the Add-On for Firefox , where it is just a matter of right-clicking in order to check the link

Cheers!

P.S. I forgot to post that you can use  Dr.Web's LinkChecker as well in order to scan sites for malware suspects (with familiar right-clicking). You may test it & add that to your article  

[MichelB]

Maybe a bit off, but...

There is no surefire way of knowing if a site is malicious and scanning the site for malware won't always help.
Unless you can be sure the site isn't running any Java, JavaScript or flash (and which site doesn't) you won't know if your Http request is being redirected or scripts are being executed in your browser to download some .exe from a 3rd party site.

Things like SiteInspector, PrevX SafeOnline, NoScript etc. are helpful but not foolproof.

My recommendation is to use one browser (IE, FF, Opera, Chrome, Dragon) for secure transactions such as online banking or online shopping and then use another browser (not the same as the first) for more dangerous web activities. This second browser needs to locked down by turning off Java, disabling JavaScript and disabling Flash.

If you want to be really paranoid about web browsing use Lynx - http://www.lynxbrowser.com/ 

[Chiron]

Maybe a bit off, but...

There is no surefire way of knowing if a site is malicious and scanning the site for malware won't always help.
Unless you can be sure the site isn't running any Java, JavaScript or flash (and which site doesn't) you won't know if your Http request is being redirected or scripts are being executed in your browser to download some .exe from a 3rd party site.

Things like SiteInspector, PrevX SafeOnline, NoScript etc. are helpful but not foolproof.

My recommendation is to use one browser (IE, FF, Opera, Chrome, Dragon) for secure transactions such as online banking or online shopping and then use another browser (not the same as the first) for more dangerous web activities. This second browser needs to locked down by turning off Java, disabling JavaScript and disabling Flash.

If you want to be really paranoid about web browsing use Lynx - http://www.lynxbrowser.com/ 

For this sort of advice please see my other article: How to Stay Safe While Online

[MichelB]

I had a look at that - very nice. I have one too - http://motionit.co.uk/services/security/staying-safe.html

I think you should include Opera in the list of browsers (as it is probably the least attacked of all the major flavours - and has probably the most fine-grained tuning option).

I would also include a side-note saying that it doesn't matter which browser you use, if it isn't locked down, its just as unsafe as any other.

[Melih]

http://www.webinspector.com/

this tells you if site is dangerous or not.

[Chiron]

http://www.webinspector.com/

this tells you if site is dangerous or not.

I added it to the methodology advised in my article. Please tell me what you think.

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