SiteHound and SiteAdvisor toolbar - good work

Anybody tried SiteHound toolbar. I am using it since few months and is nice, can be configured and there is free version. Also firefox version is coming. Another toolbar, similar with different approach is SiteAdvisor.

http://www.firetrust.com/firetrustsitehound.html
http://www.siteadvisor.com/

 

heres a previous thread on SiteAdvisor. as for SiteHound, i just wish theyd hurry up with the firefox version.

 

I think sitehound is a pretty good app. I use it on my IE even though I don't use IE as default. Every little bit helps.

 

Firefox version possibly in April as they told me in Catlecops forum, will be free as well.

 

site hound isnt freeware it says its 19.99 on the site?

 

it is free, but the paid version gives u a bit more:

 

this looks awsome

 

For now I stick with (free) McAfee FF extension:
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/wilderssecurity.com?ref=safe&aff_id=0

But I wait and see for the FF Sitehound, but yet I doubt I pay nearly $30 for this toy.


Gerard

 

The Firefox version is already available if you check the website carefully!

 

Baldrick could you show where the link for firefox download actually is. i just cant find it after looking thru. thanks.

 

You can use Sitehound free after you register you just can't autoupdate and the options are limited. It protects against quite a few bad or questionable sites. see screen shot, click on it for full size image.

 

I tested Sitehound Free on some sites sometime ago now and although a good tool (it will put up a page/warning BEFORE you get to the site chosen, with the choice to proceed or not) I found it blocked say all the porn sites chosen.
It may have had them all in its database but it made me wonder if it just blocked certain subjects.
Will take a look at it again now I have been reminded and see how the dbase of url has progressed.

I find SiteAdvisor will give out the wrong advice.

Suppose thats the 'Other people have found this site...'

 

Hi solarpowered candle

Humble apologies. I got my hounds and advisors mixed up. There is a Firefox version of McAfee's Siteavisor but there is not yet a version of FireTrust's Sitehound.

Sincere apologies for any false hopes raised/frustrations generated. I am speaking to my optician.

Regards



Baldrick

 

U can actually choose in the settings which type of sites to block- porn, possible malware etc etc.

 

aigle :

Thanks, I should have played with it longer but I uninstalled it nearly straight away, just visited a few places and took it off again - the recipient didnt like the sitehound warning page but liked siteadvisor.

If I remember rightly when a site is blocked in the free version, you are not told why, and in the paid you can whitelist.
Dont remember the settings thou but cheers will have a look again no doubt

 

Don't need something like this myself, but thinking of trying it out on behalf of friends and family. They are often bamboozled with knowing what's real or not, and also don't wish certain sites seen or accessed by their kids. If it doesn't give off too many fp's then i will suggest that they use it.

I'll repost later with my impressions.

 

You might also be interested in taking a look at this http://www.k9webprotection.com/

 

I like the common sence plug-in myself and dont use 'em either, but like you I thought something like this would help out a friend.
I'd be interested to see what your impressions are...

 

Installed and registered without any problems. The full update only took a minute or so. No slowdown in browsing speed that i can determine. Works very quickly in identifying which site you are on. When i googled for soft porn to test it, i was immediately redirected to sitehound without even seeing the any of the site i had clicked on. Very impressive, i thought, and required if you don't want someone to see any images etc. In reality it was very hit and miss, with a lot of sites evading intervention. Being able to have a password to stop sites of your choosing from being accessed, is a must with this kind of application, and sitehound has this. And you can add or delete your own preferences. Again it wasn't always successful, even with the adult sites password protected.

One big and highly inconvenient problem i found is when you click on site information for more details. This requires your popup blocker to be switched OFF, otherwise you don't get there. For me just testing it wasn't that much of an issue. But when you have shown people that a popup blocker is a good idea, and they are now in the habit of using it, having them switching it on and off could be very problamatic. They might easily forget to switch it on again, or worse they may get pretty tired of switching back and forth, so will stop using it.

Even worse was when i tested it against some known bad sites with viruses etc on. It didn't detect one i tried so i attempted to report it to sitehound using the toolbar, but after filling in the details i received a javascript error, which meant that it didn't get sent. If we have to rely on visiting unknown sites with javascript turned on to report something, then that in itself is not very safe. A few times i was redirected to sitehounds front page after putting my password and clicking to try and go to a mock music virus laden site ?

There didn't seem to a quick way to toggle sitehound on or off, should you want to. If sitehound could get round these problems, it would be a much better solution for everyone, and i will then widely recommend it. Until such a time i don't think i should. It does show promise though, and is easy for most people to use i would have thought.

Had a look at k9 briefly, but after spending the time on sitehound i'm out of toolbar mode for the time being.

 

K9 i s really just a freeware content filter (like Cybersitter (not free) etc.) not a toolbar but it seems pretty good at blocking known spyware sites etc in addition to porn and other bad sites. It is password protected so you can lock it down for kids and open it up for yourself.

 

Seems a good review, I think they don,t seem to be very active like SiteAdvisor people. If possible u can post on CastleCops, they ( FireTrust) have a foum there.
As of myself I am not using it now as I use manily Opear and Firefox.

 

I have just noticed and corrected on for OFF with regard to the popup blocker, my mistake. I Will keep K9 in mind. Thank you for the installation comments. I'm not a member of the CastleCops website, maybe someone could kindly pass it on.

 

Or we'll stumble across this thread ....good ol Google Alerts

We've found that most popup blockers allow customisation. Allowing popups from www.sitehound.com ensures that the reporting, site information etc.. all open correctly.
The trick is users actually knowing what popup blockers they run, for example a user I dealt with a couple of days ago had 4 popup blockers installed, all part of larger programs like NIS, but wasn't sure which were active etc...

Feel free to contact me direct about this and I'll chase up, email is rusticdog*castlecops.com (replacing * with @)

We are also looking at better malware prevention, and I'd like to think there will be a solid solution released by end August

Damn annoying bug this, sometimes SiteHound gets confused about what site it should go to, still looking at the resolution.

It's been a long wait, but the FF version is due for delivery 28th July, I'll give it a hammering over the weekend, and assuming no major issues will throw to beta testers the following week...


Cheers for your thoughts
rd

 

hey welcome rusticdog. by the way are you the cool dude who resides in Christchurch who brought mailwasher into existance ?

 

I live in Christchurch....but I'm not the MailWasher fella.....I get paid by the MailWasher fella though, so must make me cool by association