WOT (Web of Trust)

WOT is a free Internet security addon for your browser. It will keep you safe from online scams, identity theft, spyware, spam, viruses and unreliable shopping sites. WOT warns you before you interact with a risky website. It's easy and it's free.



If you are about to enter a risky website, WOT will warn you and save your computer before you interact with a harmful site. To date, it has more than 20 million rated sites and has been kept on increasing by 100k rated sites every month.

When you search or browse the selected sites, the add-on shows a rating symbol next to links. Supported search sites includes Google, Yahoo, Live Search and many more.

Trustworthiness:

Do you trust this website? Is it safe to use? Does it deliver what it promises?A poor rating may indicate identity theft potential, Internet scams, credit card fraud, phishing, lottery scams, viruses, adware, or spyware. An unsatisfactory rating indicates that the site may contain annoying advertisements, excessive pop-ups, or content that makes your browser crash.

Vendor reliability:

Is the site safe for buying and selling, or for business transactions in general?A poor rating indicates possible fraud or a bad shopping experience.

Privacy:

Can you trust the site owner, safely supply your e-mail address, and download files? A poor rating indicates spam, adware, or spyware.

Child safety:

Does the site contain age-inappropriate material (content that is sexually oriented, hateful, or violent in nature) or encourage activities that are dangerous or illegal?

By downloading the add on and register on the website, you can join the community and start to rate sites as well.

For more information , please visit the site http://www.mywot.com/
The addon can be downloaded there as well. It supports both IE and Firefox.

Lastly, you too can check whether your site's reputation by adding the free WOT Badge. You can view it at the bottom of my blog right sidebar.

CounterSpy 2.5

Here is the review of the antispyware that I am currently using. Its CounterSpy from Sunbelt Software. It has won a silver award at Top Ten Reviews site being second to only gold award winner Spy Sweeper. It is also far outclass Ad-Aware which I reviewed earlier


Well, it is simple to use. It is a good try for beginners who haven't use any antispyware product before. The default level already offers the best protection for most people. For those who simply likes to tweak, there is customization options available.

The software offers Active Protection which act as a shield that monitors suspicious activities in real time. There are 4 levels of protection to choose from i.e. Paranoid, Cautious, Trusting and Custom.

Select...	...to set...
Paranoid	Active Protection to the highest possible level where you will receive alerts for all known security risks.
Cautious	Active Protection to a moderate level where you will receive alerts for only serious and moderately serious known security risks.
Trusting	Active Protection to a low level where you will only receive alerts for the most serious security risks.

Well, I take the middle ground and choose Cautious.
With frequents updates, it boasts a high efficiency detection and removal rate.

Advantages of CounterSpy V2 ( from the company website )

• Heavy-duty antispyware protection treads lightly on system resources.
• Kernel-level Active Protection™ defends 24-7.
• Hybrid design combines antimalware technology with our award-winning spyware detection and removal.
• Deep-rooted malware is exterminated at boot time, before Windows loads.
• Incremental definition updates greatly reduce update downloading time.
• Over 750,000 Threat definitions!
• Vista compatible: Integrates seamlessly with the Vista Windows Security Center.

Its light on resources even on older systems. On my PC, it uses only 40Mb of memory. It doesn't much affect PC performance and start up time.
There are 3 scan options i.e. Full, Quick and Custom
On my 1st full scan it took 97 minutes which is quite long but all the while I was surfing the internet and having some small downloads. Maybe my pc is full of junk btw.

The System Tools contains 4 features

1. My PC Explorers-- monitors startup programs, running processes etc
   
2. My PC Checkup-- suggest changes to improve security after a small scan
   
3. History Cleaner-- for those who frequents porn sites hehe..
   
4. Secure File Eraser-- files that erase are unrecoverable, a better option than burning ur hard drive

There is a 15-day free trial available here.
To those who find that it is useful and wish to upgrade to full version can purchase it for USD 19.95 or personally contact me for the link to *ahem* version

Ad-Aware 2008

The latest version of this antispyware from Lavasoft is out now. Ad-Aware 2008 promises an improved threat detection, enhanced rootkit removal system and faster updates.

This version is an improvement from the 2007 version which contains lots of bugs. Most of the times I cant even download the latest signatures updates from its server.

When I install the 2008 version, it simply cant proceed because the 2007 version was detected as not even installed in my machine when I tried to remove it through Add/Remove Program.

I have to manually killing its process in the Task Manager before resorting to deleting the whole folder to get a clean and complete uninstallation.
Few years back, it is the only free and reliable antispyware available. Now, there are many alternatives of free antispyware available that I will review in the future.

Besides the antivirus integration, other features disabled in the free version include the real-time Ad-Watch guard, heuristics scanning, the scheduler, and plug-ins. What a dummy! At the moment, I have not yet found the ways to get the full paid version. Maybe later. I would only recommend it as a secondary detection engine to complement my Bitdefender Total Security 2008 which I will discuss later.

So far, I have not encountered any problems with the latest version. It has 6 skins to choose from and simple to use due to probably many of its paid features are disabled sigh...
Its available for download here