Slashdot Mirror
Browser Tools Aim to Warn Surfers of Spyware, Spam
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "New Web tools aim to protect surfers by flagging sites that are associated with viruses, spam or other scourges, but they sometimes disagree over whether a site is safe. From the article: 'Scandoo's service sometimes misses the mark in its efforts to flag adult content. On a recent day, it gave a green rating to the web site for Maxim Magazine's U.K. division, even though it contains nudity. It gave a red rating to the magazine's U.S. site, which contains no nudity. After an inquiry from the Online Journal, [executive Dan] Nadir said Scandoo decided to change the rating, reclassifying the U.K. site as red by default. "It was clear that it was misclassified, so we classified it correctly," Mr. Nadir said. A spokesman for Maxim Online said the discrepancy showed Scandoo's technology is "clearly broken."'"
It's called my brain.
That's what I want.
So the purpose of this article is to tell us about some piece of software that tries to do what many other applications do, protect the user, and fails? It must be a slow newsday. Why would anyone be interested in reading this crap? I'd like to get the 5 minutes of my life back that I wasted on this non-story.
Hey I know, I'll write some software that is designed to make the user a lot of money in the stock market. It will fail, but I will expect a Slashdot article about it. Sound good?
No, it may have something to do with what is acceptable regarding nudity in Europe vs the US. Bare breasts is not apparently a big deal with our friends across the pond, but over here, it's cause to bring out the torches and pitchforks. Besides, last I saw Maxim (the US version) it contained no real nudity at all.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Google Safe Browsing is a Firefox extension freely provided by google which warns of some dodgy sites.
UK Laptops
They just told everyone that reads slashdot where to find nudity online. I hope Maxim UK can hadle the load. Nasa buckled over a moon rock.
Site Advisor is an awesome firefox plugin that not only displays whether the site you are at is currently "safe", it also puts a little green check, yello exclamation point, or red x next to popular search engine's results. If you want to see why a site got a certain rating, you can click the check/mark/x or if you're at the site, the colored bar in the bottom of your browser, to see what McAffee found out when they scanned and indexed the site.
Shots: A Populist Parable
if everybody has their own toolbar we will need a firefox extension for web browsing soon
siteadvisor is the well known one, all the rest will just dilute the value of the information
Viewfour.com is a completely visual Search Engine. So it scans content before it can damage your computer. Blocks and warns. Scott
Umm, why was there no link provided to the UK Maxim site?
How long before we see popups inviting you to download browser tools to combat spyware :-) ?
Right, standards are different in different locales. Clearly, then, the tool should flag depending on what country you're surfing from.
Sony ha
Nudity is now in the same class as spam and trojans etc? What is it going to do, give my computer a hard drive ;)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Someone should create a browser that blocks everything BUT pr0n!
There's no place like ~.
In Communist China, all web sites have Red flags...of one kind or another...
I've been using it for about a week now. It does what it's supposed to and isn't obtrusive. It doesn't try to censor anything either; it'll only flag porn sites that have malicious content, not sites that have adult content. The little red or green circles next to Google searches are really nice too.
Link for the lazy: http://www.siteadvisor.com/
Yeah, that'll keep me off it.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
In Soviet Russia, websites flag you!
I find that although many people are liberal in beliefs, they are conservative in actions.
Creating safety on the Internet is not reached through the means of blacklists, spamlists and all that, this only reduces the problem to a minor degree thus allowing people to stick their head in the sand, sometimes totally unaware of whats really going on. If you really want to start making progress you'll be trying to make the people aware of the problem and point them to their responsibility when they logon to the Net.
/also/ make them realize that their precious connection as well as their PC can also come to a grinding halt.
Not that it makes a big difference but the moment some people finally realize that when they're being sloppy with their computer it allows 3rd parties to compromise it resulting in abuse towards others. Even this isn't always enough ("so? as long as nothing happens to me, I got nothing to hide") so
Only after you've realized this will you have a good basis to take it to the next step, which is IMO actually setting up legal grounds for retaliation. But quite frankly I don't see this happening sometime soon. First due to the overhead, second the amount of money which is being made here on all levels (even the "good guys" trying to protect us really aren't moral knights or something) and finally.. Most people will remain stupid.
The first time I read the title I read it as
Bowser Aims to Warn Surfers of Spyware, Spam
sinse when does the king koopa care about me?
I'm a Book
On the Bookshelf
But what the fuck does nudity have to do with spam and viruses? Can we cut the bullshit, and keep the anti-virus, anti-spam and I'm-a-prude-please-don't-expose-me-to-the-natural- world software separate? Some of us are grownups and just because we don't like spam or viruses doesn't me we disapprove of nudity.
Nathan's blog
Pornzilla
Easier porn surfing
Caution: Do NOT use these extensions while eating cheetos.
Off-topic question, how do you configure firefox to not being downloading a file once you click a download link but rather only after you click "save". Firefox always starts downloading right away in order to make it seem like it is faster. This is dangerous as some sites that you visit have code which initiates a download right away and in the case of Firefox it will automatically start downloading. Eeek!
Dont know if similar post made- though I would think so - but I checked Scandoo out using some search words, one of which was the notorious screensaver word. I have a Firefox browser and was using a Google search. Funny thing on the results. There were no warning signs next to the paid advertisment placements of Google ads. I use a similar service called Siteadvisor on my FF browser. For the word Screensaver, there are some red warnings for the Google ads, and on Scandoo none. Though I havent read the comments to this post, nor the Scandoos info / help section, I think it is very misleading to have no warnings on the Google ads where there should be a warning. I think many might assume because they are Google ads, Google has checked out these ads. -Know I would- Wnen in fact, I dont think Google does any such thing. If I am misinformed, or there is something I dont realize, please let me know. But imho, I think Siteadvisor would be a much safer choice. Perhaps one could use both Scandoo and Siteadvisor to check out a site. Siteadvisor has an untested tag for a number of new sites. Maybe Scandoo has a rating. Otherwise I dont see the advantage in using this over Siteadvisor.
Wasn't there a giant conference between the big three recently to implement all this INTO the next generation of browser? I can see the arguments for the tool bar, but even the google toolbar gets to me when it clutters up my workspace (even a 24" screen can seem small when you have that much junk on it - should remove it...). Why bother with a toolbar??
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Scuttle just inadvertently slashdotted maxim UK.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Thats the sounds of the keyboards of thousands of U.S. Slashdotters hitting up Maxim UK. I KNOW you guys did it too....
It's just like hearing that girl you have your eye on has crabs, while you're spraying yourself with chemicals for no reason, the guy that told you that is bangin her.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Indeed, if sites with breasts get red-flagged, a lot of people will get the wrong message when they actually go to sites with spyware or viruses. If you want to warn people about dangerous stuff, don't also mark the stuff that they're actually looking for! :)
"ALERT!!!! Your computer may be infected with spyware and viruses!!! Click here to fix this problem."
Circumcision is child abuse.
For folks who run a corporate intranet or lab at a school nudity, spam, and viruses are all "three things which we absolutely can't afford to have popping up on our PCs". They're the ones this product is aimed at, not technologically adept home users with no minors at the keyboard and no moral objections to pornography.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Viewfour.com has something called ViewSmart that you download (no spyware). After the download you are protected from everything. No popups, no takeovers, no viruses - anything with an executable on the page actually gets a warning. By the way, it's a visual search engine. So you get to see all the results. Very cool. Scott
This kind of tool is cool and all, but it doesn't solve all problems. There are a bunch of users out there who surf the internet with the "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT" attitude, on purpose. These people download anything and everything with absolute disregard. Why do they do this? Here are some of the bigger reasons:
1) It's not their computer (their employer's, internet cafe's, school's, library's, etc.) so they don't care.
2) They go around with the thinking, "I'm nobody important, so why would they hack me? They only hack VIPs."
These users are JUST AS BIG a problem as the hackers, phishers, and scammers, for they enable and encourage botnets, theft, etc. Too often these idiot end users and incompetent systems admins are left alone. I say we go for a "tough love" policy. F*ck around the net? Get your computer/network completely blocked. Want to get it unblocked? Read a long-ass pamphlet regarding the safeguarding of your computer/network, take a quiz, and sign a paper agreeing to follow stricter guidelines. If you get warned repeatedly, you're either fined or taken offline permanently.
Now THAT, would get everyone's attention, and force morons off the net, where they don't belong.
eTrade SUCKS
but its not Google so unless it works like Google or even Yahoo and gives the same organic results (instead of the paid for ad shite) nobody is going to use it, especially when the site gives messages like
You should enable cookies in your browser in order to use our website.
yeah right, now wheres my back button
Puts a new twist on the term "Red light district" doesn't it?
H.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
Why the hell would the amount of nudity on a given site have anything at all to do with how many viruses and trojans the site tries to get you to download?
Take playbloy.com for example, I highly doubt that there are any viruses or trojans on that site, yet there's a hell of a lot of nudity.
Now, take other "OMFG FREE P0RNZ CLICKZ0RZ H3R3!!!ONE!" sites that display some random pornographic image while it tries to install no less than 3 trojans on your system. Less nudity, more scamming.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Without cookies how does a visual website determine your preferences and determine your screen size?
What slashdotter will use this on all the torrent/war3z/donkey_punch websites they go to?
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Research shows that, just surfing around for an hour or maybe a little more will infect a normal windows PC with several spyware and virusses.
I expect this "research" to more or less stay on the paved road. You start at CNN, slashdot and the microsoft home page click on the links, and avoid clicking the obviously pornographic adds.
So, if you do that, obviously some "straight" sites somehow still infect those MS Windows machines.... Either they buy an add with a bigger add-distribution club, or they have a contract themselves with the "legit" site.
I'd think it's impossible to detect the infecting sites beforehand, because the web changes so quickly. Moreover if say slashdot ran an add for a car brand that happend to have a marketing company hired that uses the spyware trick to get even more revenue, slashdot would quickly stop the add from running, right? Especially after getting on this blacklist. The only thing you can do is to detect, and prevent infections.
If you can not reproduce the experiential results yourself, the published article isn't worth the paper its written on. :) and a cold fusion reactor for you to power it's lights with ;P
Or
If you believe everything or every tend you read in a scientific journal, then I have a bridge for you to buy
Finally if you don't understand the above then you have never spent time in a research environment.
As for "Models and Sims" they are only as good as the data you give them or GIGO from the old days.
Boobies ? BOOBIES ?
Run for you life !!!!
(the only thing that change is the direction in which the people are running).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The tool should be called scamdoo.
Since when is nudity considered spam or spyware?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Firefox users can get SiteAdvisor, which has chronicled most of the signups and some of the downloads on the web (Lots of signups!) and tells you if you get spam emails from signing up for this, or if that download will screw up your computer.
I'm only reading foreign magazines from now on. (Except Hirsute Slut Revue, which has beautifully eloquent essays)
Please stop stalking me, bro.