AVG brings LinkScanner malware detector to the Mac (Macworld.com)

A consort that provides antivirus offerings for PC users is transfer a liberated unification attender to the Mac.

AVG Technologies plans to show a Mac edition of AVG LinkScanner, a liberated download that scans Website course for possibleness threats. AVG says its LinkScanner covering checks Web pages in real-time, bill a warning to users if the code finds a Website that could bear possibleness problems.

“Every azygos instance you utter on a link, whatever instance you’re accessing aggregation on the Internet, we construe it, hunting for malware and phishing attempts,” J.R. Smith, CEO of AVG, told Macworld.

AVG’s code doesn’t rely on blacklisted sites that hit been flagged for possibleness bruising content. Rather, the covering uses real-time checking to signal users to potentially questionable sites. The consort relies hard on a super individual base—tens of jillions of users, according to AVG—to bonded users are aquatics to bonded Web pages.

Mac users hit lived mostly liberated of malware and viruses, as malware creators hit convergent on offensive more widely utilised platforms. That figures to modify as the Mac becomes a more widely utilised system, thanks to the ontogeny of both OS X and Apple’s ambulatory iOS. But the actual danger is display by the ontogeny of ethnic networking sites that process the venture Web surfers could start beast to phishing and another vindictive attacks.

“We’re not here noisy that Macs are vulnerable,” said Smith, adding that same whatever papers the Mac OS has its vulnerabilities. Rather, adventurer continues, the threats display by attacks via ethnic networks threaten users disregarding of platform. “We’re protecting grouping in whatever cases from themselves.”

Look at the crescendo prominence of short URLs, adventurer said. Savvy Web surfers utilised to be healthy to countenance at a address and blot a possibleness phishing attempt; condensed URLs attain that harder to do. “You can’t wager [the flooded URL],” adventurer added. “You can’t be your possess policeman.”

The liberated download of AVG LinkScanner is fashioned for Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6; it runs on Mozilla Firefox 3.x and after as substantially as Safari 3.x and later, including the new free edition 5 of Apple’s Web browser.

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