Website to check links legitimacy?

[atikovi]

Found this on another forum by someone posting a link in a thread. When asked about the link and if it's safe, he said you can check it out at virustotal.com if you have any suspicions. Is this site itself a good way to check if links are safe or legitimate?

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/url

 

[simple_gifts]

Don't you see the paradox here?

 

[atikovi]

Whats a paradox?

 

[FowVay]

Whats a paradox?

It's when you have two dox packaged together.

 

[atikovi]

That's irony.

 

[bunnspecial]

A college friend of mine went to medical school and ended up marrying someone else from his medical school class. I call them a paradox.

 

[mk378]

Your way to determine if a link can be trusted is itself a link. Is that link trustworthy?

 

[JeffKeryk]

Whats a paradox?

2 Doctors working in tandem, I believe?

 

[atikovi]

Your way to determine if a link can be trusted is itself a link. Is that link trustworthy?

Umm....that's what I'm asking here.

 

[chemman]

It appears to be a legitimate website according to Norton 360 and Firefox. If either do not trust a website I'll get a warning screen. No warning screen from either.

 

[benjy]

recently i ordered tyres from BKids.net checked it on line said OK but NOT!! after about a month contacted chase Visa + got a full refund!! their price seemed to be too good + surely it was. not the first time + glad i use a chase visa!!!

 

[atikovi]

It appears to be a legitimate website according to Norton 360 and Firefox.

I understand that but is the service they provide legitimate or accurate. Would you trust the results they give after entering a link to a website or page?

 

[StumblingElk]

Virus total is supposed to a trusted company amd owned by Google.

That said, I'm not clicking that link

 

[atikovi]

Virus total is supposed to a trusted company amd owned by Google.

Where does it say that?

 

[opublic]

Where does it say that?

An update from VirusTotal

Our goal is simple: to help keep you safe on the web. And we’ve worked hard to ensure that the services we offer continually improve. But as...

blog.virustotal.com

 

[atikovi]

You would think they would put that on the home page to get some cred.

 

[uc50ic4more]

I understand that but is the service they provide legitimate or accurate. Would you trust the results they give after entering a link to a website or page?

For this service to be truly legitimate, someone somewhere somehow has to be the one who decides what constitutes what in the world a "legitimate" link even is. Then they'd have to do that for the entirety of the internet. I don't know how, logistically or conceptually, anyone could do that.

I suppose I could see this service running a quick malware scan, or running the URL against a database of known scam sites; but I am pretty sure that most browsers have that same protection, built-in, working in real-time.

EDIT: Their tag line is "Analyse suspicious files, domains, IPs and URLs to detect malware and other breaches, automatically share them with the security community." I guess that's useful in some way; but in no way, shape or form would I a) take time to check a URL before clicking on it, nor b) consider this to be a reason to take my foot off the gas pedal when it comes to exercising common sense.