AVG Technologies, maker of a popular free anti-virus software, is now providing a safe-surfing solution called LinkScanner. LinkScanner is a free standalone product to protect users who want to safe surf the internet against random, invisible online threats
AVG LinkScanner gives users an additional real-time layer of protection on top of their existing security software. AVG has rejected the traditional approach of relying on information about sites previously found to have been poisoned. Instead it works by looking at the web page behind a link or a web address typed into a browser and analyzing whether it harbors a threat. If it does, then AVG LinkScanner stops the user from downloading that page.
Plus unlike other solutions, AVG LinkScanner analyzes individual pages on a web site to generate a rating for those pages. If a safe-surfing solution only rates entire sites based on what it finds on a couple of pages, a bad rating on those one or two poisoned pages would result in blocking users’ access to any of their friends’ pages on sites such as Facebook or MySpace.
AVG LinkScanner also applies this targeted analysis of web pages to search results from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Whenever users search using these search engines, they will see safety rankings for all -˜organic’ search results. In addition, the AVG LinkScanner will scan your bookmarks as well as links contained in instant messages and emails before you open them to ensure they are safe.
Availability and System Requirements
The software is free for use on any personal home computer for non-commercial purposes. It can be downloaded from http://linkscanner.avg.com. Support is available through a free online forum hosted by AVG at http://freeforum.avg.com.
AVG LinkScanner runs under all current versions of Windows XP and Vista, both 32- and 64-bit. The software is compatible with all major security software and with Internet Explorer 6 or later and Firefox 2 or later browsers. AVG LinkScanner is available today in English and will be available in Brazilian Portuguese, Czech Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, Korean, Bahasa, Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Russian and Malay from mid May.
