Whenever I see a suspicious looking URL I want to go to, I usually just search it up on Google's webcache and browse the site that way. But I just realized that I never really had evidence to support this kind of habit. Are web cached pages generally more safe than the original pages?
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Cached pages aren't inherently more secure, as the same page is being sent to your browser. It still renders the website in your browser. If you need to go to a sketchy website, turning off plugins and JavaScript makes it more safe. In Chrome, go to Content settings and add a Deny exception for the site in Plugins and JavaScript. For Firefox, use the NoScript add-on.
Austin Haakenson
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It is all down to what "cached" means... Since you mentioned Google Cache, a default cached version, caches the text and load external resources (potentially unsafe): So it is by default no more secure than accessing the webpage directly.
If you edit the cached URL however by adding &strip=1, it will be more secure by essence, because the current cached page has been stripped of external references.
Example:
If you wish to check a URL that is suspicious, I would advice doing so on a Unix/Linux (including OS X) VM then restore a snapshot.
if using a Windows computer, I would be a bit more careful, open a private session in the browser, disable Java, Flash, Silverlight and any other plugins (but the antivirus/malware agent), then access this page or use the striped cached mode.
Florian Bidabé
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