Google has this handy tool for scanning web sites and letting you know whether it’s safe to visit them or not. Google Safe Browsing is indeed for ‘Safe Browsing’. The online world is more or less similar to the offline world, it might look safe as long as you are within a border, but if you go out of it, then you’ll be welcomed by malware websites, phishing websites, and much more.
Thankfully we have a tool provided by the search engine giant themself. Go to Google’s Safe Browsing page and enter the desired URL. Overall, as far as I checked, they have three statuses: Not Dangerous, Partially Dangerous and Dangerous.
Google Safe Browsing – Status: Not Dangerous
We scanned hellboundbloggers.com for checking any issues and we got a “Not Dangerous” status. That means we are clean and we are ‘safe to browse’.
Google Safe Browsing – Status: Partially Dangerous
I used another demo website, which is kinda affected, so this is the status for them:
Google Safe Browsing – Status: Dangerous
Again I used another demo website, which is almost fully affected, so this is the status for them:
The URLs I used on the last two screenshots are some links I got via online forums. I was searching for an English subtitle for a Korean movie and I ended up in a forum, where they gave randomly mentioned some links to download the subtitles. I badly wanted to watch the movie with subtitles, but then, I don’t want to risk my computer as well, so this Google’s handy Safe Browsing tool came to the rescue. Just a quick scan and tada you know whether to open it or not.
You should be very careful when you are opening any short URLs as well. Most of the spam URLs these days are shortened and spread all over the Internet.
thanks for sharing .I’ve often wondered on how to check for malware, as I hate when I get it on my own system, so this is extremely helpful. Thanks ..
Thank you for that word of warning about the spam webs, about the Google Safety center. Creating an awareness to those who are unaware of these spams, malware etc., etc… is much appreciated.