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Norton Safe Web

View a website’s safety ratings before you visit.


Plus, the Norton Safe Web browser extension now has several new features to help protect your PC in new ways.

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What is Norton Safe Web?

Norton Safe Web helps you surf, search, and shop more safely online. It analyzes websites that you visit and helps detect if there are any viruses, spyware, malware, or other online threats.

 

Based on the analysis, Norton Safe Web provides safety ratings for websites before you visit them. Now, Norton Safe Web has new features to help protect in new ways. Read on to learn more.

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Norton Safe Web browser extension

Should you use the Norton Safe Web browser extension? Yes!

Not everyone likes browser extensions, and some can feel unnecessary or intrusive. However, there is one browser extension that is very important to help protect you on the web, and that is the Norton Safe Web extension.

The Norton Safe Web browser extension is available for:

Google Chrome®
Mozilla Firefox®
Windows Edge®

Norton plans with device security include the Norton Safe Web browser extension. If you are a current customer and you have not enabled the Norton Safe Web extension, you may see a warning in red in the Norton desktop app along with a notification to enable the SafeWeb extension.

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Why use Norton Safe Web?

The web is full of useful and entertaining websites that we use every day. The web also has many sites that contain online threats like malware or spyware.

The cyberthreat landscape has changed, and there are new cyberthreats that specifically affect web browsers. We have added new features to help combat these new types of cyberthreats.

How can you enjoy the myriad of information that the web has to offer while avoiding some of the risks?

Norton Safe Web enables you to do both.

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Changes to the cyberthreat landscape

Many of us who use a PC spend a significant amount of time in a web browser, so it makes sense that cybercriminals would attack the browser itself.

Threats can lie in malicious websites, legitimate websites that have been compromised, and malicious advertisements (called “malvertisements”).

Norton Device Security and the Norton Safe Web browser extension work together to help protect against many types of threats that you may encounter online, in your web browser or otherwise.  

Newer cyberthreat types that we help protect against include cryptojacking, formjacking, and fake tech support:

Cryptojacking

With this type of cyberattack, a cybercriminal is trying to steal your computer’s processing power to “mine” cryptocurrency and make themselves money, while slowing down your browsing experience.   

Formjacking

With this type of cyberattack, a cybercriminal manages to compromise an online retailer by injecting malicious code into the checkout forms to steal credit card information. 

Tech support scams

With this type of cyberattack, a website will simply pop up a message saying something scary like, “Your computer is infected!” when it is not. These pop-ups can look legitimate, and many people fall for these scams and get tricked into paying the tech support scammer for a “fix.”

In order to better protect your devices against the cyberthreats we’ve just described and many others, it is very important to install the Norton Safe Web extension.

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Norton Safe Web features

Because the cyberthreat landscape continues to change and evolve, we have updated Norton Safe Web to provide even more features to help protect your devices—and the personal information they store—even better than before:

  • Website ratings
  • Protection against phishing and scam sites
  • Online Banking Protection New
  • Intrusion Protection System (IPS) Scanning New
  • Link Guard New
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Norton Safe Web feature:

Website ratings

Websites may be easy to create, but not all are made the same with regard to their security.

Legitimate websites can be targeted by cybercriminals, older websites that are no longer managed may not be properly supported with good security, and some websites are built specifically to spread malware.

Norton Safe Web provides safety ratings of websites based on multiple criteria:  

  • Has the site been compromised and known to distribute malware?
  • Is the site relatively new and yet showing the traits of suspicious activities (e.g., suspicious use of scripting languages or drive-by downloads)?
  • Has the site ever been used to scam someone with fake products and services?
  • Is the site potentially faking other brands or other reputable sites?
  • Does the site redirect users to other potentially compromised websites?

If these types of things are true about a given site, Norton Safe Web will warn you before you visit, and you can decide whether or not to proceed to that site. The website ratings also include an explanation of why the site is rated unsafe along with recommendations, so you then can make an informed decision when it comes to visiting websites.

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Norton Safe Web feature:

Protection against phishing and scam sites

Is your browser making a loud noise telling you that your machine is infected and you must call a toll-free number to fix the security issue?

Is a site telling you that you must log in to confirm your recent credit card transactions?

You may be about to give away your login credentials or credit card PIN number to cybercriminals, also known as getting “phished.”

Our scam protection in the Norton Safe Web browser extension gives you protection against fake tech support attacks.

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New

Norton Safe Web feature:

Intrusion Protection System (IPS)

The Norton Intrusion Protection System (IPS) is now available in web browsers (Microsoft Edge®, Chrome™, and FireFox™) as part of the Norton Safe Web browser extension.

IPS plays a critical role in filling holes created by bugs in operating systems, browsers, and applications. IPS detects and helps stop exploitations of security vulnerabilities.

IPS has been a part of Norton Device Security solutions for some time, but now that it is also a part of the Norton Safe Web browser extension, the content of suspicious web pages, advertisements and pop-ups are now cross-examined in an additional way, giving you even more protection when you browse the web.

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New

Norton Safe Web feature:

Link Guard

Webmail and social media are great tools for keeping in touch with friends and family, but unfortunately, they can also contain phishing attacks.

In a phishing attack, cybercriminals lure you to click a link or download an attachment, often in a message that seems to be coming from someone you already know and trust.

When you see an email with links urging you to open or download, it can be difficult to know if the link is really from a friend, leading to compromised sites, or going to run malware once you click.

Our team has taken the guesswork out: Now, Norton Safe Web will scan webmail and feeds for links and mark them with red if the link is likely to be suspicious or malicious.

Norton Safe Web browser extension

The Norton Safe Web browser extension is available for: 

Google Chrome®
Mozilla Firefox®
Windows Edge®

Get the best of the Norton Safe Web browser extension with a Norton plan with device security, like Norton AntiVirus Plus or a Norton 360 plan:

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Frequently asked questions

Why do I need to take an action to install a Norton extension?

From a security perspective, it’s a good thing that users like you take a step to enable browser extensions, as doing so means you give your permission to add it to your browser. 

The way current operating systems and browsers are designed, users are required to take an action to add an extension, and that’s for your own security.

I am a current Norton user with a device security solution. Why is my solution showing a red warning about Norton Safe Web?

Because the Norton Safe Web browser extension is so important to helping protect your web browsing, we have a notification in red for current customers with device security, saying to enable it.

While we want all users to use the extension, we have added the ability to snooze or disable the red state warning to get back to the green state, even if you choose not to use the Norton Safe Web browser extension.

Can using the Norton Safe Web browser extension slow down my browsing experience?

Any time you add additional security there can be a slight performance tradeoff. We do extensive testing to optimize the performance to make it as minimally noticeable as we can, but if you encounter an issue related to performance, please let us know and we can try to reproduce the issue and work to fix it.

Will this extension modify my default search engine?

No, the Norton Safe Web extension does not modify your search engine preference. We do have a separate extension called Norton Safe Search that does send you to our customized search engine.

I’ve been using one of your device security solutions for a long time. Is the protection available in the Norton SafeWeb browser extension new?

Whether you have the Norton Safe Web browser extension installed and active or not, if you have a Norton Device Security solution installed on your device, you are already receiving multiple layers of protection against a wide variety of cyberthreats.

Installing the Norton Safe Web extension gives you even more protection by enabling you to take advantage of the new features described above.

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