Norton Safe Web (sometimes abbreviated NSW) is a service developed by

Symantec Corporation Gen Digital Inc. (formerly Symantec Corporation and NortonLifeLock) is a multinational software company co-headquartered in Tempe, Arizona and Prague, Czech Republic. The company provides cybersecurity software and services. Gen is a Fortune 50 ...

that is designed to help users identify malicious websites. Safe Web delivers information about websites based on automated analysis and user feedback. The software debuted as a public beta in 2008, and is now included in current versions of

Norton Internet Security Norton Internet Security, developed by Symantec Corporation, is a discontinued computer program that provides malware protection and removal during a subscription period. It uses signatures and heuristics to identify viruses. Other features incl ...

and

Norton 360 Norton 360, developed by Symantec, was an “all-in-one” security suite for the consumer market. It was first released in 2007, but was discontinued in 2014; its features were carried over to its successor, Norton Security. In 2019, Syman ...

. A limited, standalone version of Safe Web, known as Safe Web Lite, is available as a

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...

. Safe Web operates as a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

plugin, and requires

Internet Explorer 6 Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is a graphical web browser developed by Microsoft for Windows operating systems. Released on August 24, 2001, it is the sixth, and by now discontinued, version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Inter ...

Firefox 3 Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is a version of the Firefox web browser released on June 17, 2008, by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox 3.0 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standard ...

or later. The 2012 release of Safe Web Lite added

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macO ...

support.

Function

In addition to actively crawling and analyzing web sites, Norton Safe Web relies on feedback from users and ''Norton Community'' participants. When a

drive-by download Drive-by download is of two types, each concerning the unintended download of computer software from the Internet: # Authorized drive-by downloads are downloads which a person has authorized but without understanding the consequences (e.g. down ...

occurs at a web site, the suspicious URL is automatically reported to Norton Safe Web for analysis. The reported site is rated as unsafe if the analysis confirms that the download is malicious. To ensure that its site rating accurately reflects the current state of a site, Norton Safe Web performs frequent re-analysis of Web sites. Norton Safe Web employs a site rating aging algorithm which estimates how often the safety of a particular Web site will change. Some of the factors used in this analysis include the site's rating history, the site's reputation and associations, the number and types of threats detected on the site, the number of submissions received from Norton clients, and site traffic. In other words, unsafe sites that are more likely to have been cleaned up are re-analyzed often while those that might take longer to remove detected threats are re-analyzed less frequently. User reviews are also accepted, with contributors ranked by reputation. Should a site owner dispute the ranking of their site, they can submit a request for re-evaluation after completing a validation process.

Critics

Norton Safe Web is complained about by many users/web administrators as websites will be classified as "unsafe" incorrectly. Even if reevaluation request is submitted, the site will still be listed as "unsafe" and no reevaluation action is taken place indeed. There have been reported instances of bloggers criticizing the quality of Norton Safe Web who have since been blacklisted by the tool.

Incorporation

Safe Web is installed alongside

Norton Internet Security 2009 Norton Internet Security, developed by Symantec Corporation, is a discontinued computer program that provides malware protection and removal during a subscription period. It uses signatures and heuristics to identify computer virus, viruses. Oth ...

and

version 3.0 as a browser toolbar. It color codes search results returned by

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

, and

Bing Search Microsoft Bing (commonly known as Bing) is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service has its origins in Microsoft's previous search engines: MSN Search, Windows Live Search and later Live Search. Bing provides a variety ...

using green, yellow, or red. Hovering over a pop-up summary will bring up a summary of the findings, and include a link to the full report of the site. Safe Web will also prompt or interrupt access to malicious sites users try to access directly via the

address bar In a web browser, the address bar (also location bar or URL bar) is the element that shows the current URL. The user can type a URL into it to navigate to a chosen website. In most modern browsers, non-URLs are automatically sent to a search eng ...

Reception

Safe Web blocks

phishing Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent (e.g., spoofed, fake, or otherwise deceptive) message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious softwar ...

sites, overlapping in functionality with Norton Internet Security and Norton 360. Using Norton 360 v3, '' PC Magazine'' found discrepancies between Safe Web and Norton 360's built-in phishing protection. Symantec stated that phishing sites change rapidly, and one Norton service may be using older definitions than the other. Norton Safe Web has drawn some ire among Windows Live! Plus users as it shows that the Windows Live! Plus website contains malware.Rubenking, Neil J
"Blocking Bad Web Sites"
'' PC Magazine'', March 13, 2009, accessed July 15, 2009 Also, Norton Safe Web blocks numerous sites with third party extensions such as Mailgun and

New Relic New Relic is a San Francisco, California-based technology company which develops cloud-based software to help website and application owners track the performance of their services. History Foundation and early years Lew Cirne founded New Reli ...

. The verification of site ownership keeps failing so site owners can't fix the issue.

Norton Safe Web Lite

A free version of the software, Safe Web Lite, is available free of charge. The primary difference between the version of Safe Web bundled with

and

and Safe Web Lite is that Safe Web Lite does not block malicious websites. However, Norton AntiVirus updates it with Norton SafeWeb Statics when Norton SafeWeb Lite is installed on your computer. Green means safe. Yellow/Orange means caution. Red means warning.

References