Cyscon Security Shield warns you about phished, hacked or malicious sites in Firefox

If you don't know that "affair site" Ashley Madison was hacked recently, you'd probably continue to use it as if nothing happened if you are a user of the site.

Hacked sites are a big issue on today's Internet and you read regularly about hacked sites and how millions of user accounts were stolen in the process.

If you add to that phishing sites that are still a constant threat on the Internet, and outright malicious sites, you'd better make sure your browser, computer and data is properly protected.

One tool that can help you if you are using the Firefox web browser is Cyscon Security Shield. The browser add-on displays warnings if a site you are visiting in Firefox is flagged.

If you visit Ashley Madison for instance, you receive the following warning in the browser.

This goes beyond the standard warning messages that you get when visiting known phishing or malicious sites as it not only informs you of the type of threat, but also what you should do to protect your personal information from being cracked, sold or abused.

For instance, if you are affected by a hack, you may want to change the account password as soon as possible and make sure you don't reuse the same password on other sites. If you do, you should change it on those sites as well to protect all accounts from misuse.

The icon that the extension adds to Firefox's main toolbar indicates if known alerts exist for the active site. A click on those opens the warning page that displays direct information about the issue and links to sites that may provide you with additional information.

The data is taken from the company's own PhishKiller service (and others apparently as listed on the official website of the project) which is being used by Opera Software to protect users of the browser. The add-on introduces the functionality to the Firefox web browser.

Another interesting feature that the add-on introduces is Botnet checking. It compares the active IP address of the computer against a database known Botnet IP addresses and notifies users if the computer seems to be infected with malicious software that took control over the PC.

The company notes that it does not store any data while the add-on is being used.

Closing Words

Security Shield is a Firefox add-on that adds another layer of protection to the web browser. Especially the notification of hacked and breached sites can be useful as it is easy enough to miss an announcement especially if smaller sites were attacked.