We have examined 3 different web browsing tools that can help protect you from landing on harmful sites and/or downloading Rogue or harmful software. All 3 are available for the most common web browsers. They all have the same color coding - Red=BAD, Green=Good, Gray=unknown.
ZenOK is a toolbar that can be downloaded by itself or it can be added to our Wizard of OS Toolbar by clicking add to browser from following this link: add to Wizard of OS Toolbar (adding it to our toolbar is not available for chrome)
This toolbar will flag a site bad from their list of bad sites, it does not give a full report necessarily on why it is bad, but it will show up as red and say dangerous site and/or if you have the toolbar version installed on your browser, it will produce a STOP page in a new window and you will have to agree that you understand the risks but want to continue to the unsafe page anyway. I like that it makes a huge effort to notify you, but dislike that it has no settings that allow you to decide to be stopped or merely notified when it perceives a site to be dangerous.
Here's the irony - McAfee's Site Advisor may or may not flag the site where you can download the zen toolbar? That may look like this:
However, that being said, you can then click on the RED McAfee to view the report and it then says:
Hmmmm... What? You gave us a serious warning and then said you were just kidding? Ok, ok, so maybe some of the sites within the conduit toolbar site are questionable? It is just a toolbar site and the toolbars have been created by various sources. Yes, I'm sure some of the toolbars might be suspect as probably close to 300,000 publishers are on that site. But, MANY toolbars originate from conduit and many nice ones like ours. Therefore, don't flag an overall site or good toolbar when only minor issues have been found with a few of the toolbars and the majority of the toolbars have no known issues. It begs the question, was the Site Advisor security toolbar trying to discourage us from downloading a competitors security toolbar? Just asking...
Well since McAfee has flagged another security toolbar as dangerous and then took it back, let's actually take a look at McAfee. Their toolbar is called McAfee's Site Advisor. Let us make a note that none of the other security tools flagged the Site Advisor page as bad. This is what the McAfee Site Advisor toolbar looks like on your browser.
Of course the green means we are on a good site, it turns red when a dangerous or risky site is encountered and/or throws up a banner at the top like the one above for the ZenOK toolbar download.
I really like the control that the site advisor bar allows the user. You can use the toggle right beside the McAfee word and it gives so many options.
You can choose to let it block risky sites for you or only warn you. You can add trusted sites. This is very useful as it certainly doesn't have a grip on EVERY site available on the web. Most that it hasn't evaluated it doesn't flag them as red/bad, but just goes gray with a question mark.
It also has a locked protection option - you can set a password that will NOT allow flagged or risky sites to be loaded without the password. This is a nice feature for the kids or friends using the pc that might have a tendency to over rule the warnings and load a dangerous page. However, that option only comes with the paid subscription version. A subscription currently runs $19.95 per year. It appears to be hard to get your site added or evaluated to the tested and approved sites as well. For example we requested our http://wizardofos.net and http://wizardofosweb.com sites be evaluated and they are still queued and say they will be tested soon. Although, it has said that since we submitted them almost 2 years ago. Of course, the good news is it doesn't automatically declare untested sites as bad. The sites it hasn't bothered to evaluate it doesn't flag one way or the other, just states unknown. However, regarding the zen toolbar site above, it actually flags it, but after you click to see the report, it then says it is tested and is OK. However, sadly most won't bother with the report, they will just see the warning and assume it's a bad or risky site. Again, these bars aren't perfect, we've found seriously BAD sites that the McAfee toolbar not only doesn't flag as bad, but it won't let you leave a review either. Regardless, I'd much rather get a false POSTIVE than a positive FALSE. So, an unknown rating is no better or no worse than without the bar. However, not being able to leave a review on other sites and/or able to get them to evaluate our site in almost 2 yrs is a bit of a deterrent for believing they are on top of their game.
WOT (Web Of Trust) is the third security tool I want to mention. It doesn't present like a toolbar exactly, but just looks like a little icon by your web address bar area. I like the simplicity of that as it doesn't appear bulky or want to take up 2inches of your bar width like some of the others. It actually attaches to your existing browser bar and plays nice.
Ok site
bad/poor site 
bad/poor site unknown or not enough ratings
It also throws this banner up when a "poor" site is being loaded.
You can then click the rating details and it will give you more info relating to how it is unsafe or poor:
The same with this WOT tool as the McAfee Site Advisor one, you can open the settings and pick and choose how much control you want it to have, etc. We of course, love having an option menu. It has rating choices, warning level options, search engine options, popup search option and some advanced options including one that will recreate the WOT icon browser button toolbar if it gets removed. The fact that it allows you to rate a site and shares your opinion with the community is also a big plus in our book. It also allows you to verify immediately if you are a site owner via meta tags or via a file that you can add to your site. However, we frown upon the fact that you have to BUY a WOT trust seal for your site as opposed to just being awarded one for being a legit and trustworthy site. Of course, who are we to reinvent the wheel? The Better Business Bureau has operated in that same manner for as long as I can remember and no one questions their integrity.
Conclusion:
Fox Mulder did say "Trust no one," but he also said "I want to believe." Most of these flagged sites are only as good as the users that have flagged them good or bad. I'm sure some of the sites that are blocked are evaluated by an employee that works for that security toolbar company, but would imagine most are not and only rely on what users report. Of course, the ones that only rely on their own evaluations will never be caught up. I would think the most successful ones would be those that count the user reviews and also have employee interventions or evaluations as well. However, generally if a site does come back with any dangerous ratings, that should be given some consideration before completely ignoring the warnings and downloading various things from the site. In our findings none of the toolbars were aware of every bad site, but generally 2 out of 3 found TRUE bad sites to be bad and warned us or blocked us before loading the site. Doubt any of them are full proof, but any and/or all of them can be helpful. I don't think you can go wrong with all of them, but not sure you can actually go RIGHT with only one of them? However, if you have to choose only one, WOT might win out with us because it gives the user more setting options than the others and seems to make rating a site easier for the user. Of course, any of them will still be better than none and should be used with common sense.
So, overall we give all three a thumbs up, but warn they are to be used as a "help" and/or a safety suggestion tool with much discretion applied.
(or Zen Tool to be added to Wizard of OS Toolbar)
