In this post you will read about how to check a url for safety ? This is an obvious question, while surfing Internet, daily we come to links which point to a website which we never visited earlier. Though we can prevent us clicking on the new ‘suspicious’ link, but what if my friend had sent me and it’s urgent to access it, in this case how you would make sure your computer will stay safe ?
In this article we will learn how we can check whether the link contains virus, malware or trojan and is harmful or not.
The best way to find whether the URL which you want to access is harmful or not is to scan it and check whether it contains malware, virus, trojan, keylogger or any such harmful program which may get installedin your computer automatically and harm your PC and steal your data.
Don’t worry, it’s not so difficult to scan a URL for malware, there are many of the online service which provide user option to scan any suspicious website and that too for Free. Suppose someone gave you any suspicious link such as www.example.com/abc/phis/hck.php
1. Comodo Web Inspector
You can make sure that URL is not harmful by first using free Comodo Web Inspector, visitsiteinspector.comodo.com, enter the suspicious URL and click on” START THE SCAN” button, wait for few seconds for scan to complete and results will be in front of you, it will let you know whether it found any malware on site or not, if it says the link is harmful, don’t open the link, but if it says it’s safe then you can open the link.
2. Zulu URL Risk Analyzer
Second free service to scan suspicious URL is Zulu URL Risk Analyzer, visit zulu.zscaler.com, enter the suspicious URL, click on Submit URL button, wait for some time, it will scan the website and give it a score from 0 to 100, where 0 means completely safe and 100 means completely harmful. This website scans all the elements and tells whether they are Belign, Suspicious or Malicious. Though this service is helpful in advance thorough scanning, it has also reported false positive on safe site.
3. Virus Total
Third free service which will help you to find whether URL is safe or not is VirusTotal, visit www.virustotal.com/en/#url
and enter your URL and click on Scan it! button. Wait for few seconds and it will check the reputation ofwebsite from various directories and will check whether it was ever marked as suspicious or malicious or not. It will give you test results, and if you find that it’s not malicious then you can access it tension free.
Alternate method :
McAfee SiteAdvisor
McAfee SiteAdvisor software is a free Web security plug-in that provides you with simple red, yellow and green Website safety ratings, McAfee SECURE trustmarks for sites passing more rigorous daily tests, and a Secure Search Box so you can click with confidence and safely surf, search and shop online. This program tests websites for spyware, spam, phishing, and browser exploits, and its automatic updates help protect you from the latest threats.
SiteAdvisor technology works with 20 search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, Bing, AOL, and Ask. It does not require any other security software to work. With SiteAdvisor software installed, your browser will look a little different than before. We add small site rating icons to your search results as well as a browser button and optional search box. Together, these alert you to potentially risky sites and help you find safer alternatives. These site ratings are based on tests conducted by McAfee using an army of computers that look for all kinds of threats (detailed below). The result is a guide to Web safety. The SiteAdvisor technology is free, easy to install and even easier to use. And it doesn’t collect any personally identifiable information.
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