A FireFox Feature Gets My Attention

July 14, 2009

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A FireFox Feature Gets My Attention

I have written lately about being careful who you link too. Especially in the comments section of your blog. Generally, when a link appears in the context of a post these are generally considered safe. The writer has established some kind of relationship or experience with the site that they are pointing out in their post. While it is possible that any site can be infected with malware these are usually safe to visit. However, the older the post is the less safe any link will be.

A commenter on this blog rightfully pointed out that we need to be extremely careful. He noted that the site that we were linking to could have been sold. It could now be any number of things that we would not desire to be linked to. I see this everyday when I’m doing research or simply link building. Roughly 15% of the sites that I visit in any day are no longer what they once were.

It becomes a whole different ballgame when we are considering user generated content such as blog comments. In most cases the person leaving the comment is linking to their own site. It is possible that their site could have been exploited without them being aware of it through some java script, plugin, or through other avenues. This is one of the reasons that I visit sites that are being linked to in my blog to verify that they are worthy of my links. I would rather find the problem than have you end up with a nasty surprise.

Even being diligent can never assure safety on the internet. A site could be compromised long after a comment is left. This can not be controlled, so I check all sites for your safety and ours. I have very good anti virus software that presents us from acquiring most malware when visiting other sites. But that happened way to late for us.

Today, I discovered that we have another layer of protection that I was unaware of through the use of FireFox 3.5. Although it has lots of problems opening this new version it has extra protection feature in place. I discovered this by accident today. Someone left a rather unusual post comment that said this person wanted to hire us. This is not the kind of statement that would be most potential clients would make on the blog. Those wanting to discuss services usually go to the contact page. So I was suspicious.

I was skeptical of the comment. You can get jaded very quickly as a blog owner. Since the comment needed a follow up I naturally followed the link to the site. FireFox denied access to this site and delivered up a bright red warning box. It read Reported Attack Site and it had additional information. I was both surprised and relieved. What I thought was a bogus request was merely a ploy to direct me to a site that could have caused some serious problems. Now, I am fairly confident that our anti virus program would have protected us but you never know.

Then strangely I find an email alert in my inbox that discussed this FireFox feature that I was unaware of. One thing is certain I am on high alert these days. The site was hacked last month and I have been writing about spam and spammers lately. They don’t much like it when you call out their negative behavior. So in this sense we have a target on our site. We have adopted somewhat strident security measures on the site recently but again you never know.

These people who do this don’t care that its your business and livelihood that they are messing with. It’s all a big joke to them. Now, having said all of that I will attempt to continue to be a positive influence on our industry. I will continue to develop our ethical link building programs and write for the small business owner.

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