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."'"

Comments

Siteadvisor is better

[klept]

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.