McAfee SiteAdvisor Blog

Who the heck are we?

Well, first, we are a group of people who wanted to create a company to help fight the bad guys who are making it harder to enjoy and trust the Web.

Second, we’re mostly people with technical backgrounds who wanted to take on this very formidable challenge.

Third, we are the kind of people who love data. We like knowing that registering with Site X will result in getting 310 e-mails per week, or that downloading Toolbar Y will also install adware on your machine which will give you pop-ups out the wazoo.

Don’t get us wrong here –- our goal is not to stay in the technical weeds and be known for spewing out a bunch of obscure data about the safety of Web sites. Our objective is to make user-friendly safety recommendations that are crystal clear but which are also backed up by lots of cool testing techniques and water-tight analysis.

Oh, and we like conversation too, peppered with a healthy bit of controversy. We encourage both Web site users and Web site owners to comment on, add to, or challenge our ratings. Other than filtering for a few four letter words, we’ll post comments, unedited, to create an atmosphere of open discussion and continual improvement.

A natural question to ask is: don’t we already have enough tools for online safety and security? Certainly there are a lot of tools out there. Anti-virus, anti-spam, spyware removers, personal firewalls. But these tools almost all deal with problems after they start occurring. You sign up for a new newsletter and then receive endless spam. Or you get infected with spyware and your machine slows to a crawl. SiteAdvisor is different. It helps you make better decisions before the bad stuff happens.

Here’s an analogy that might help. When you move into a new city, you change the locks on your doors (e.g. you install a firewall and anti-virus software). But when you walk around at night, you use your “street smarts" to avoid dark alleys and questionable neighborhoods. Over time, you talk to old timers and neighbors and learn what streets to avoid. On the Web, it’s different. For one thing, the Web is simply too big. No matter how long you surf, there will always be neighborhoods new to you. For another, it’s too easy for the bad guys to try to scam you with fake sites which look almost identical to the real thing. Most peoples’ “street smart" sensors simply aren’t sensitive enough to pick up the clues.

SiteAdvisor is your street smarts helper. We’re trying to help both novice and advanced Internet users make better decisions on the Web –- where to safely browse, what to safely download, where it is safe to give out personal information or shop.

We have lots to tell you about exactly how we're going about the challenge of helping you stay safe online, and we have even more to tell you about the good, the bad, and the ugly that we've already found out there. But all in good time.

Before we sign off: We just launched a Preview Version of our Web site and our software today. (If you'd like to request a password for it, you can do so here.) We’ll be using your feedback during our Preview Version test to refine and improve our Web site and our software prior to our launch in early 2006. More on how we could use your help as Preview Version testers in our next entry.