SiteAdvisor was founded by a group of MIT engineers who wanted to make the Web safer for their family and friends. Having spent one too many holiday breaks trying to clean a mess of spam, adware, and spyware from our families' computers, they decided to take action. While traditional security companies had gotten relatively good at addressing technical threats like viruses, they were failing to prevent a new breed of "social engineering" tricks like spyware infections, identity theft scams, and sites which send excessive e-mail. To address this challenge, they built a system of automated testers which continually patrol the Web to browse sites, download files, and enter information on sign-up forms.

Check a site online: http://www.siteadvisor.com/analysis/

Easy to use software for Internet Explorer and Firefox summarizes our safety results into intuitive red, yellow and green ratings to help Web users stay safe as they search, browse and transact online.

Download version: http://www.siteadvisor.com/download/