TrendProtect

I wrote a tutorial for issue 116 of Windows XP Made Easy about TrendProtect and it turned out to be quite a nice toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox. It performs two jobs and firstly it adds a TrendProtect button to the toolbar and this tells you whether the current website is OK or not. It is very simple and if the button is red it means that the site has been associated with malware of some sort, such as a virus, phishing, Trojan, a scam, adware, or spyware. You should take great care when visiting websites that make TrendProtect turn red. In addition to the red button, you will see a pop-up warning message too.

Websites that are safe to use are indicated by a green button and this means that they should, in theory, be trustworthy. Of course, you always need to be careful on the web, but you can be fairly sure that the site is OK. A pop-up box tells you that the site is safe.

Sometimes TrendProtect doesn't know anything about a site and then it will turn grey. Don't panic, it's just one of the zillion sites on the web. It's probably OK, but be careful just in case. The TrendProtect button will sometimes turn orange and this means that the content might be unsuitable for some people, eg children and sites promoting smoking or alcohol.

The second job that TrendSecure does is to analyse the results links at Google and Yahoo! and tell you which sites are OK and which to avoid. It uses red crosses and green ticks to indicate the good and bad sites. It's a great way to avoid the worst of the web and it's free.

You can find TrendProtect on the TrendSecure website in the free utilities section. It works on XP and Vista, but if you use Vista you must turn off User Account Control (UAC) when you install it (or uninstall it). It runs OK with UAC enabled once you have installed it, apart from a UAC box when you start Internet Explorer asking you to OK it. (Lots of programs do trigger UAC alerts though.)