scandoo

Scream if you want to go faster!

You thought Scandoo was fast? Thanks to ScanSafe - we've got the fastest real-time security technologies in the world - but now we're going to be sending you Scandoo verdicts even faster. 

So now, as soon as Scandoo thinks a site is most likely to be safe, a paler 'scanning' verdict icon is displayed, which is followed by the final 'still' verdict icon.

        Means we have started the Scandoo scanning and analysis process.

        Means that we're pretty sure this site deserves the icon displayed.

        Means that all scanning and analysis processes are complete.

Why are we doing this?

Basically - we make sites jump through hoops to get their green, yellow, red or spider icons - every time we see them.

Scandoo is very different to other site advisory systems - we actually put search result destination/end pages through a system of security scanning and analysis processes in real time, every time - rather than fetch a simple older verdict from a static database.

It's a complex process that now generates a 'first' verdict - pretty accurately, and very quickly. Then it does the analysis required for a 'final' verdict – this is the security equivalent of looking both ways before crossing. This will often be the same as the ‘first’ verdict, but we think it pays to be certain.

Let us know what you think of this change - any ideas on how we could improve this? We're all ears.

To scan or not to scan... that is the question...

We received an e-mail recently asking:

Why do we scan and analyse every link - and surely it's not in real time?

The answer's to the first bit is quite simple:

Would you cross a road on the basis it was safe at one point over a month ago?

Quite. We think the same way about visiting websites - as they can and do change as often as road traffic does - sometimes safe, sometimes not ...

So we always 'look both ways' every time before 'crossing the road' to visit a site.  The only way to do this properly is to scan and analyse every time.

We put every search result through a whole heap of ScanSafe processes, multi-layered malware scanning, dynamic heuristic analysis, multiple list verification and content investigation - amongst other analysis processes - it's what it takes to be safe on the web today!

And for the real time question...

Scandoo icons are always generated in real-time based on real-time analysis - We can do this in real time thanks to the really clever system architecture and parallel processing technology. You can read more about it on ScanSafe's website. The service most of this technology came from is a business service that's a secure web proxy to access the internet through - literally scanning web traffic so quickly that users can't tell if they are going straight out to the internet or being scanned.

Mighty clever stuff if you ask me!

Grey Icons

We've has a couple of e-mails asking:

What is this grey icon? You don't see them very often?

It's one of our testing icons that lets our development team know to look into something - We don't think they'll be around for too much longer, we are working on it! (Scandoo is still a beta product). As part of the new bubble we have also rolled out an upgrade to the scanners, so they find risks faster and help deliver the content in the bubble more reliably, and this is part of the development of that component.

What does this mean for you? 

On the infrequent occasions they do appear, exercise the same caution you would if you didn't have a Scandoo icon.  But don't worry for most searches you won't come across them.

Bubble Bubble!

We've been busy over the last few weeks in Scandoo's labs and today released a major upgrade to the service - one we're really proud of.  It's a new speech bubble.  It's quite a bit different as it should load faster, and look a darn sight clearer.  (We're fans of elegant minimalism here!). We've added some icons to help make it easier to see which content category we've classed the site as. We're still tweaking it, so it might change a little over the next few days.

However, Scandoo isn't just about being pretty. It's quite smart too. (We actually scan every page to deliver our security and content opinions.) Long term this new bubble will mean we can offer you some great new features, such as contextually specific content in the bubble while you surf. The bubble is now tabbed, so we can show this new info, in the same space. 

We've got some ideas as to what we think would be useful content, but we'd love to hear what you'd like to see in the pop-up - what specific information about the site, e.g. has this site been on digg? are there any relevant myspace profiles? what do other sites say about this content?  are there related searches? Drop us a line as a comment or an e-mail - we'd love to hear from you!

Scandoo for Yahoo!

We've now got Scandoo for Yahoo! live on our servers! - have a peek here http://y.s.scandoo.com/search?p=scandoo

Roll Up, Roll Up, Get your Scandoo Toolbar!

It's here! The all new Scandoo Toolbar for Internet Explorer (V6 or higher).

Keep the security and safety of Scandoo close at hand. The toolbar even lets you switch search engines with a click or two.  Like the Scandoo web service, it's a beta, so there will be more features being added in the near future!

Best of all it's free, and available for download now.

Click here to get the Scandoo Toolbar, and don't forget to let us know what you think!

Walt Mossberg's Take...

On Thursday (22nd June), Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal looked at our service. It makes for interesting reading. He seems to have appreciated the way we look for offensive content as well as security threats. At the same time he's given us some great feedback that we're grateful to receive, we'll be tightening up the security aspects of Scandoo beta, with the addition of scanning for sponsored links in the near future, and keep your eyes peeled for more new search engine support. Our new toolbar (it's so so close to being ready) will also go some way.

We're sure the next time he reviews Scandoo, when it's out of beta and completed, he'll love us more.

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060622.html

Sneak Peek - Regionalisation

Here's a treat for our Blog readers... we thought we'd give you a sneak peek into something that we've been beavering away on, and is on the verge of being included in our Scandoo beta.   

Regional Support: We've had lots of requests for Scandoo to support regionalised sites such as Google.co.uk instead of Google.com.   Eventually, we'll have the world covered, but we have to start somewhere! You can try the UK edition of Google with Scandoo here, and the UK edition of MSN with Scandoo here. Just enter any search term in to the box that appears, and let us know what you think!

Scandoo's development really is driven by user feedback.  I know we repeat this a fair bit. We launched as a beta service because we thought it was the best way to get insight into how to further improve it and get help in ironing out the bugs.

Web Security Trends

Today, Scandoo’s parent company ScanSafe published its Global Threat Report. It is a monthly analysis of the 5 billion web requests ScanSafe protects for its international corporate customer base. 

Interestingly for Scandoo users, they saw 71% of users unknowingly attempting to install Adware and Spyware ridden browser helper objects (generally things like toolbars). Interestingly enough Screensaver related spyware dropped from the Top 10 Spyware. It seems that the media attention that area arrived at, and the availability of services like ours, is both stopping people from trying to download these nasty programs, and encouraging Screensaver spyware mongers to clean up their act.  Although we think they’ll just move to another medium, but since we scan each request, we’ll be able to keep up with them.

Other interesting bits of information were that Spy ware/Ad ware protection blocks had increased by 9% on the previous month and of the total blocked, 5.7% were 'drive by install' attempts (installs which aren't transparent to the user that they are installing an application). 

 

Scandoo "Make Over" Time!

Sadly, Trinny and Susannah haven't been to Scandoo HQ. I've still got the same bad dress sense. :(

We’ve just released a make over of our site, it’s minor, but should give more information. If we’re not explaining something, let us know, we’ll do our best to get it on the site. We've also added the ability to add comments to re-define requests.

Contrary to the numerous ‘beta’ products out there, Scandoo really is a beta. That mean the core works, but is being worked on and added to every day. It’s pretty accurate right now, but we are still ironing out a few bugs, refining how we operate and so on…  We know there are areas we can improve on, and are working to our increase functionality, categorisation and ease of use.

However, we can’t spot everything or get everything right. There’s a very very big world wide web out there. While our own mechanisms for site classification based on analysis work well, your re-defines really make a difference. It’s easy to redefine a site, just click on the link in the pop-up!