McAfee SiteAdvisor Plus

Antivirus vendor McAfee has released an enhanced version of their free SiteAdvisor toolbar. Like the freebie, McAfee SiteAdvisor Plus lets you know in advance if a website is rated potentially dangerous. But the Plus version goes a few steps further, also protecting against malicious links in email and IM. And for Internet Explorer users, the Protected Mode feature lets you lockdown 'red' sites with a simple password, keeping your loved ones from straying into hostile territory. You can try McAfee SiteAdvisor Plus free for 30 days, after which the company plans to charge $24.95. Or you can buy SiteAdvisor Plus now, direct from McAfee, for an introductory price of $19.95.

Considering the lengths today's attackers will go to in order to claim new victims, having the extra security of an always-on link checker isn't a bad idea. Just a few days ago, Sophos reported that hackers had edited a Wikipedia article on the Blaster worm, adding a link to a supposed 'fix', which actually downloaded a trojan. (According to Sophos, authorities at Wikipedia spotted the miscreant edits quickly and the article was removed).