DigitalBeat

Purewire is a web security company that serves business users. But now it’s announcing a new consumer service that helps users screen through bad web sites and check the identities of people they don’t know.

Dubbed Purewire Trust, the service handles three major threats: Potentially malicious people, unsafe places on the web, and potentially dangerous things like Java applications. With Purewire Trust, you simply type in someone’s email address to collect a bunch of information about them.

With the email search function, you can find out if an eBay user has a good reputation, or who your kids are befriending online, or if a job applicant is being honest, said Paul Judge, chief technology officer and co-founder (pictured right) of the Atlanta-based company. The search results show the person’s reputation and what social networks they have joined, including Facebook and MySpace. It then lists the pages so that you can view them, if privacy settings have not been activated.

As for places on the internet, you can check to see if web sites have bad records in terms of cyber security, where their actual servers are hosted, and other details like how many seconds it takes to load a site. If you ran a search on Kazaa, for instance, you’d find that the site isn’t trustworthy, consumes a lot of bandwidth and is a frequent source of malware. It will also tell a security administrator which port the site uses and how it can be blocked.

The company was founded in November 2007. It raised $1 million from its co-founders, raised $3 million from friends and family, and is in the process of raising a $10 million round. The company has 40 employees. At the moment, Purewire makes money only from its web security business. It is preparing to launch a beta of the consumer site today.

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