WebProNews

AVG has pretty good timing considering the recent success cybercrooks have had with manipulating search results to direct searchers to malicious websites. The security company released a free tool today that scans links before users click on them.

AVG LinkScanner, available for free download, checks URLs ahead of clicking by scanning the webpage and alerting the user if the site contains malicious code. When used in conjunction with Google, Yahoo, or MSN, the tool shows green check marks beside safe results and red exes beside unsafe ones. The tool also works with links in email, IMs, and bookmarks.

The company says on any given day two million web pages are infected with malware, and every day 60 percent of threats move to a different webpage, including (and especially) those on trusted websites. Available for Windows XP and Vista users, AVG’s LinkScanner prevents users from downloading compromised webpages.

“It’s our belief that every computer user has the right to basic security protection, regardless of the ability to pay,” said J R Smith, AVG Technologies’ CEO. “These dangerous web pages threaten to disrupt the very fabric of the internet as well as how we view and use it; posing an even bigger threat to users than viruses.

The tool scans pages individually, so prevention and labels only apply to one page on a given website, not the entire site itself.

The free scanning tool comes at a good time as Google has been struggling with malicious pages making their way high up in the search results before the search engine can identify them as attack sites. The problem has gotten bad enough that Google says its ranking algorithm will be tweaked to make this less likely.

No word yet on whether the tool also works with URL shorteners, used on social networks and microblogging platforms like Facebook and Twitter to fit links into character limits. Recently hackers have been using URL shorteners to trick users into clicking out to malicious sites.