Sunday, July 13th, 2003, p. 58

SaferSurf – Washing machine for the Internet
Fed up with spam, viruses and pop-ups?

by Martin Eisenlauer

The internet is full of dangers. Whoever doesn't protect himself is contaminated by viruses, covered with advertising e-mails and perhaps even still snooped about by hackers. Even if the user protects himself is he truly protected from all kinds of attacks? The internet service SaferSurf deletes viruses, filters unwanted e-mails and makes sure that no one leaves any traces in the net. BamS has tried out the service.

For protection one can simply subscribe under www.safersurf.com. Here one has the choice between single services such as blocking email ads, virus protection etc., or a complete protection package. The prices for the services range from $1.90 to $9.90 per month. At the registration, a one-time setup fee of $12.50 is added to the amount.

Afterwards you must change some settings in the Internet Explorer (which is also taken care of by a small program upon request), and then you can safely surf over the servers of SaferSurf. If a web page is downloaded, it is first passed through the SaferSurf servers to examine and then on to the user PC. When passed through the SaferSurf servers, ad banners and other dangerous contents like viruses and spyware are immediately deleted so that they never reach the user PC. Advantages of this solution over other virus scanners and ad blockers: The SaferSurf databases which filter out dangerous contents are always up to date. The user never has to search for new versions or updates for the virus scanner or ad-blocker. In our practice test the service performed very well. Annoying spam is successfully deleted and no viruses were downloaded from the internet.

Pleasant side-effect: Since all internet data runs through the SaferSurf servers, your internet provider cannot comprehend when you were on which internet pages. The subscriber surfs in complete anonymity in the net and leaves no traces behind.

Furthermore, SaferSurf promises to accelerate your internet connection. However, we couldn't experience this effect during our tests. The amount of time it takes to receive data is reduced but the user does not necessarily surf faster because of it. On the contrary: The impression often arises, that one surfs more slowly as or else in the peak times (in the evening and at the weekend). Also when downloading bigger files from the net there is occasional delays.

Further disadvantage is the volume restriction. Each month the user must manage with only a gigabyte of data traffic through SaferSurf. This suffices loosely for normal surfers. For example, anyone who downloads movies from the net through DSL has already the limit after few days.

BamS result: SaferSurf makes surfing safer. However, the high monthly price combined with other online charges through the users ISP makes this safety quite expensive.

Clean thing
The SaferSurf servers make sure that only clean data packets arrive to the users PC. With SaferSurf, virus scanners and ad-blockers are no longer needed.