SiteAdvisor now part of McAfee

SiteAdvisor was the first company to test and rate nearly every site on the internet with a stoplight-based rating system, McAfee said in a statement released today.

The company helps protect home PC users from spyware, spam, adware and browser attacks as well as social engineering scams, according to the news release.

"SiteAdvisor's patent-pending technology strongly complements McAfee's existing solutions, and we clearly share the same philosophy on consumer protection," said Bill Kerrigan, executive vice president of McAfee Consumer.

The acquisition will help McAfee customers, both home and enterprise, who use search engines for their web-surfing, according to McAfee's news release.

"In addition to the consumer benefits, SiteAdvisor offers great potential for our enterprise solutions as well," said George Heron, vice president and chief scientist at McAfee. "This unique technology adds another dimension of strength and value to McAfee's threat databases and will offer a significant corporate benefit."

SiteAdvisor CEO Chris Dixon said Wednesday on his company's website that the acquisition will help SiteAdvisor products reach a much larger market.

"McAfee has tens of millions of existing users worldwide. We're excited about the ability to bring SiteAdvisor's web safety protection to existing and new McAfee users around the world," he said. "By teaming with McAfee, we can leverage both McAfee's world-class security technology and leading research capabilities to bring additional layers of protection to SiteAdvisor's already extensive safety database."