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Using search engines safely.

On 20 May 2010 at 8:58am Technophobe. wrote:

I have had a few safety issues recently on my laptop and last week was unable to log into my online banking facility.
I rang them and they said not to use a search engine to access their bank.
He gave me the whole address which I put in the main search bar right at the top of the page.
It all worked in the end but it got me thinking about all the other times I use Google to access other sites such as Paypal,Tesco online,Amazon etc.
Any thoughts??

On 20 May 2010 at 10:27am I dont live in lewes... wrote:

Look for the security padlock?
Check that http either is, or has changed to https?
PhilX

On 20 May 2010 at 11:16am MC wrote:

Why don't you just bookmark them? You could add them as links to your top browser bar too if you wanted (by dragging the url from the browser location bar to your browser links toolbar).

On 20 May 2010 at 11:58am Technophobe. wrote:

Padlocks are always there Phil,even when I do access these sites from my bookmarks or Google...So I suppose all is ok if they are?
MC.Thanks for that. But I am not calling myself Technophobe for nothing....But I will review all my important bookmarks and access them from the top bar in future.
Thanks for replying.

On 20 May 2010 at 11:20pm SG wrote:

The problem with using a search engine is that somebody could quite easily make their own website that looks just like your bank's, and optimise it so that it showed up on the first page of your Google search. A lot of people completely neglect to use the address bar and do *everything* through Google, leaving them fairly vulnerable if they click on the wrong result.
A few months ago Google threw up an minor SEO glitch, that resulted in the first result for the search term "Facebook Login" linking to a random tech editor's blog. He was inundated with comments and e-mails asking how to log into Facebook by people who hadn't even thought to type "facebook.com" into the address bar of their browser.
Long story short; you're probably fine, but to be really secure you should always type the address of the website you're heading to directly into the address bar and/or bookmark it for future use.

On 21 May 2010 at 10:01am Technophobe. wrote:

Thanks for that SG...That is exactly what the nice man at Nat West online support said.
Ok,another question.
I used to have AVG and was quite happy with that.And I would get little green tick things on my Google searches,which apparently deemed sites 'safe'.
Having dispensed with AVG and installed Microsoft Essentials and Malaware Bytes I have lost my little ticks.
Is there any way I can get them back?
And do I really need them?

On 23 May 2010 at 1:50pm Ed Can Do wrote:

Rather than having the green ticks, if you click on a dodgy link with Microsoft Essentials installed it'll pop up a window telling you the site is dodgy and redirects you back to Google automatically. There's a button to tick in the pop up window if you really do want to visit the site.