25 Products We Can't Live Without

When I use an unfamiliar PC and get search-engine results that lack the colored safety icons of SiteAdvisor, I feel like I'm stumbling blind into questionable territory. The terrific free safety tool from McAfee for Firefox and Internet Explorer adds a small colored icon next to results from Google, Yahoo, or MSN to indicate whether a site is hunky-dory, might send me spammy e-mail, or could even try to attack my PC with malware. What's more, it gives full details on why a site received a particular rating. Of course, it doesn't offer absolutely impenetrable protection, but I'd hate to live without it. A $20 Plus version offers extra features such as site blocking.

--Erik Larkin, Privacy Watch columnist