The McAfee "red" system is like the indicator light on your car. Just because the red indicator light comes on, it does not mean that you stop your car and park it. It is simply an indicator or warning that there may be a problem. For some, who are not mechanically inclined, it is best to stop driving and take the car to a mechanic, while for others, it serves as a warning that they might need to perform some type of service on the vehicle in the near future. Still others, may choose to ignore it completely, because they already know why it is on and that it is not a critical issue.
McAfee Site Advisor is very similar. For the inexperienced user, it can help to keep you away from dangerous and harmful sites and keep you safe. By always heeding the red warning, the user takes less risk, but bypasses many opportunities. A more experienced user who wishes to read the explanations provided by McAfee, can determine for themselves whether the current site poses a danger, or the site has been flagged because a link could possibly lead to a dangerous site or download. By doing so, they have a bit more risk, but also have the greater reward of getting to many more sites and downloads which are really safe, but have been flagged as red by McAfee's site advisor.
The Site Advisor indicator is simply a tool. It is up to the user of the tool as to how they want to use it.
To use an extreme as an example, if absolute internet safety is the user's primary concern, they could just shut off their internet connection!
Having said all of this, McAfee has kept me out of harm's way several times, but by reading their short breakdowns, I have also found many flagged sites to be of no threat.
Hope this helps.
