Twitter, the biggest micro-blogging site has become a widely used communication tool these days. This makes use of hackers by posting spam messages on hot topics in hopes of gaining clicks when people search through Twitter. Because of the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter most of the URL posted on Twitter is shortened by services like tinyurl. This hide the real URL that also imposes certain risk to the users, because they do not know where they will be taken if they will click the link.

Finjan has released a browser plug-in, SecureTwitter that protects your PC from malware that can be downloaded from the shortened URLs. It scans every URLs and gives security ratings before you clicking the link.

SecureTwitter is part of SecureBrowsing, a free security extension for your browser (Firefox and Internet Explorer) that scans and classifies web addresses to provide you with safety rating of URLs before you visit them.

Unlike other similar products, Finjan’s SecureBrowsing scans each URL as it currently exists on the web, each time the address is displayed in your browser. It proactively alerts you to potentially malicious web addresses in links of search results, ads and other selected web pages.

Safety ratings are provided visually next to each scanned URL. For simplicity, Finjan’s SecureBrowsing uses three color-coded symbols: Green-safe, Red-unsafe …. (Via – IDG)

SecureTwitter can be downloaded from here