This is a known fact that Emails cause the spreading of more than half of Virus and Spyware. The bad links, wrapped and disguised in seemingly un-harmful and innocent emails, create havoc with your internet security.
Savvy Internet users can detect the un-harmful links from those with malicious intents easily. But sometimes it becomes extremely difficult for them also to detect these bad links, which sometimes point you to rogue websites, which are meant for the distribution of malware.
I have just come across an online service, which is able to tell you, whether a particular link is safe for your visit or not. It uses several services like Google Safe Browsing, AVG database, SiteTruth database and PhishTank database to base its opinion about the character of a website or web link.
How to find Virus and Spyware in Emails?
Now, whenever you get tempted to click on a link given in an email or a website, and you are in doubt whether the link is safe to visit or not, then you can copy the link and head straight to Online Link Scan. Here you just paste the link and check it whether it is safe to visit or not.
Online Link Scan will scan the various services and give you its recommendations.
But how accurately it detects Virus and Spyware in Emails
I tried the service on a few known websites, which freely distribute the malware. However the results were mixed. I will not publish the names of all of these websites, but one of them was http://www.stalkdaily.com, which is the recent threat affecting many Twitter users.
Online Virus Scan failed to recongnize the true character of this link and gave it a clean chit. However, if you Google about stalkdaily.com, you can easily know the true character of this link.
In yet another instance, I tried the home of the known Rogue Security Software www.spyprotect2009.com. This tool was not able to correctly report the true character of this website also.
All in all, there may be some instances, where it gets failed to detect Virus and Spyware Threats accurately in Emails and websites, but it doesn’t mean that the service is not useful. However, we advice not to solely rely on it. This may be one of the tools in your Internet Security Kit.
Related: Browse other Internet Security Tips
April 12th, 2009 at 5:51 am
A combination of the Web of Trust addon and Finjan’s ‘in-the-cloud security tool’ work well together.
There are of course many tools available depending on the users experience, but for the less savvy users these work very well and WOT would be my preferred application as it is regularly updated and bad sites are soon blocked
April 12th, 2009 at 6:12 am
Yes Colin,
I agree that WOT is one of the effective tools in this process. I have not yet tried Finjan.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
The computer viruses and spyware are increasing day after day. For your own computer safety, it’s better to perform the virus and spyware scan once per day!
April 29th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
It’s really disheartening to hear about all the problems online. I originally wrote a book on how to speed up your computer and then discovered that many problems were created by the users themselves, simply because of poor computing habits. Worse was discovering the incidences of online fraud and most of that comes from phony emails. It changed my focus to writing an intensive special report about online fraud and how to protect yourself. Once you know how to do that, speeding up your computer is the next thing. It’s not available yet, but will be in the next month or so.
May 1st, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I was so disturbed by conficker many days ago.I Have to reinstall my pc for make it better again.
June 18th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
How can i see If the email itself has a virus in it?