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by snowflake1556 on December 16th, 2005

snowflake1556

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How do you know if a website is safe to use and won't give you pop-up ads, make you vulnerable to hackers, etc.?

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  • by Karl Plesz on January 2nd, 2006

    Karl Plesz

    I'm sorry, but I have a big problem with a previous answer.

    The appearance of a lock on your status bar (not task bar) and the letter 's' after the usual 'http://....' does NOT indicate you are browsing a safe web site, nor does it indicate that you will be safe from pop-ups.

    What it does indicate is that the page you are currently browsing is using encryption to transfer data between your computer and the server hosting the web page. The encryption is to protect against the data being viewed if it is intercepted while in transit, which is good when you're sending or receiving data like bank account or credit card numbers, or any other type of sensitive information.

    There really is no way to know whether a web site is safe to use until you've already established a trust relationship - unless it comes with a trusted recommendation from someone you trust.

    If you want to protect yourself from pop-ups and vulnerabilities, make sure you get all the security-related patches to your browser and operating system. Perhaps use a pop-up blocker or a browser with one built in (like Firefox). Stay away from dubious web sites, such as those that offer warez (pirated software). Don't install every free toy you find on the internet. And be prudent about how you type web addresses in your browser - www.rbay.com (an easily mis-spelled www.ebay.com) might look like ebay, but it isn't.

    Comments

    • Thanks for the help.

      snowflake1556

      by snowflake1556 on January 25th, 2006

    • This is a damn good answer for stupid computer users such as myself, thankyou.

      svthuyku

      by svthuyku on February 11th, 2010

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