Net tool offers security alerts

Besides blocking pop-up ads and offering alerts to new e-mail, a growing number of toolbar features can enhance security, expanding on the capabilities of the ubiquitous locked-or-unlocked padlock icon that signals whether information supplied to a merchant is secure.

GeoTrust Inc. hopes the green, yellow and red indicators on its new TrustWatch tool will become just as recognizable.

Beginning today, Web surfers can download a beta test version of the tool for free at trustwatch.com - Windows and Internet Explorer users only, for now - that GeoTrust says will let users verify the authenticity of Web sites and their compliance with security standards.

The tool features green, yellow and red light icons that continuously advise about the potential for fraud. The display is updated with each move to a Web site.

The advertisement-free TrustWatch site also enables users to enter a Web address or domain name into a search box and get back a rating measuring the site's security certification and the quality of encryption it uses to safeguard communications.

"We think the industry has kind of reached a crisis point, where if consumers are going to continue buying online, they're going to demand trust," said Neal Creighton, president and chief executive of GeoTech, which says it secures about one-quarter of all Internet transactions.

Creighton said the TrustWatch toolbar device does not track users' activities.

Source: Boston Herald