Scandoo Helps Make Web Surfing Safer

I just got a quick demo of ScanSafe's Scandoo, a service that categorizes your Web search results so that you know whether you're surfing into spyware, porn, or other sorts of treachery. Scandoo is free for consumers and will officially launch this Monday, although a beta has been available for a while.

It works like this. Go to Scandoo's site, enter a search term, and choose a search engine to perform your search. Right now, Scandoo works only with Google. ScanSafe vice president of product strategy Dan Nadir says that Scandoo should work with MSN Search by Monday and with Yahoo! and Ask to follow. Also, Nadir says that Scandoo will soon be available as an IE toolbar and Firefox plug-in.



I entered a loaded search term and hit the Search button. Each search result on the subsequent Google page was marked with an icon: Green means that the Scandoo considers the site OK. Yellow means that Scandoo hasn't classified it yet. Red means that the site matches a Web genre category--Sex, Drugs, Weapons, etc.--that is checked in user-configurable security preferences. A bug icon means that adware, spyware, or some other sort of malware has been previously found.

Scandoo works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. It is honest about flagging adware, and search results didn't seem slow. Categorization is a little simplistic, though. By default, both drug enthusiast and drug education sites come up with red icons, for example. Hovering over the red icon tells you whether the site is classified as Education as well as Illegal Activities, so you can make a more education decision on whether to click on the link.

Nadir says that ScanSafe is not collecting or reporting personal data or Web surfing habits. ScanSafe does use the unclassified sites that appear in search results and requests to redefine a site's category to fine-tune their corporate-level product.