When we open an Untested Website, the Norton Toolbar shows the Green "OK" icon of safety.contd below

Norton Security | Norton Internet Security
1

Norton help pages recommend us not to visit “Untested” websites, but if we open an Untested Website directly in a browser it opens and the Norton Toolbar shows a Green “OK” icon of safety. This is highly intriguing and unsafe in my opinion. This is what the Norton help pages say about Untested Websites: Site Untested You can see a gray question mark icon next to the search results. When you visit this Web site, the Norton Toolbar shows a green OK icon. Norton Safe Web has not analyzed this Web site and it does not have sufficient information about this web site. As Symantec has not tested the Web site, it is recommended that you do not visit this Webs site.

2

Hi SwadeshDeepak,

 

Welcome to norton community.

 

Could you provide the website name or URL? 

 

Thanks,

Senthil

3

Huh? It's all "unknown" websites. They have grey icons in the search engine results, but the icon the status bar when you enter the website is green.

4

Hi SwadeshDeepak,

 

The issue arises because the Norton Toolbar site safety icon serves two purposes:  For tested sites it indicates if any threats have been found.   For untested sites the icon becomes a phishing site indicator.  So even if a site gets a gray question mark on a Google results page, when you actually visit the site the toolbar will show green if the site is not known to be involved with phishing.  You can check this yourself by clicking the icon - you will get a site safety summary for a tested site and a "No phishing detected" dialog for an untested site.

 

It is confusing and potentially misleading and has been discussed here before.

5

Yeah, that's my main issue with this: if you enter the website with the grey icon and then click the green icon in the status bar, it suddenly says "The site is safe" even though Norton doesn't know anything about it. If you click "Full report" after having entered the site, that report says, "Norton Safe Web has analyzed xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com for safety and security problems"  when it obviously hasn't.

6

 

If the site is untested it means safeweb attribute for the URL is not yet set, so safeweb won't return any value for the URL.

But the Antiphishing functionality works on the URL and it performs its analysis and finally it says the page is not fraudulent(or) no phishing detected for the URL, so it says green in the toolbar. As you can see in the safeweb drop down from the toolbar, it only says No phishing detected and gives green for it and nothing is mentioned about the Safe web attribute.

 

Thanks,

Senthil.

7
senthilkumar wrote:

 

nothing is mentioned about the Safe web attribute.

 

Thanks,

Senthil.


Yes it is - click the "Full report" after entering the unknown website, and you'll see "Norton Safe Web has analyzed xxxxxxxxxx.com for safety and security problems. "

8

Hi Bombastus,

 

When you click on the full report it takes you to safeweb website where it again shows "?" icon mentioning "Page not analyzed".

And so we don't mention that in the toolbar drop down of the safeweb and we show only the AP property.

When you now switch AP to OFF, toolbar would show the safeweb attribute which is "Site untested".

We update the toolbar to safe atleast when anyone of the attributes of AP or safeweb return safe.

 

Thanks,

Senthil

9
senthilkumar wrote:

Hi Bombastus,

 

When you click on the full report it takes you to safeweb website where it again shows "?" icon mentioning "Page not analyzed".

Ah okay.

10
Bombastus wrote:
...click the "Full report" after entering the unknown website, and you'll see "Norton Safe Web has analyzed xxxxxxxxxx.com for safety and security problems. "

I get a "This site has not been tested yet" page.  The Phishing status box does say "Site is safe," but it is referring only to it being safe in terms of not being a phishing site.  That is where the confusion lies.  The dual functionality of the icon really should be changed.

11

Please note that in the Norton help pages instruction regarding Untested Websites, Norton says, “As Symantec has not tested the Web site, it is recommended that you do not visit this Webs site.” But when we open a website which is “Untested” but we are not aware whether it is safe or untested, the Norton Toolbar shows the green OK icon of safety. One does not click on every site’s icon to further check whether it is checked for safety on all features or just for “phishing”. On one end Norton recommends we do not visit untested websites, and on the other hand the same websites are given a green OK icon of safety. It’s contradictory and a safety risk. If it’s OK/safe, then why does Norton recommend us not to visit Untested websites?