Patent attributes
A user who is browsing the web may use a web site verification service to ascertain whether a web site that appears to be associated with a trusted entity is actually associated with that entity. The web site verification service retains the URL of an unauthenticated web site. The user types a text string naming the entity that the user believes should be associated with the web site into a text box. A database such as an internet search engine database or a database containing a list of trusted entities and their URLs may be queried using the user-supplied text string. The retained URL may be compared to the resulting list of URLs. If the retained URL does not match one of the URLs in the query results, the user may be warned that the web site does not appear to be associated with the trusted entity.
