Ned Potter is the science correspondent for ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson." He has reported on such topics as space exploration, the human genome and climate change.
RECENT POSTS
- Mars Rover: Stuck in the Mud
- Tranquility Base
- NASA's Ares 1-X Test: The View From Above
- The Yes Men
- The Missing Link -- Not
- Moon Crash Kicked Up Plume After All
- Moon Crash: Where's the Water?
- Green Apple: Firm is Latest to Leave U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- Recovery.gov: Your Tax Dollars at Work
- Climate: Power Companies Quit U.S Chamber of Commerce
MONTHLY ARCHIVES
« Previous | Main | Next »
The Most Dangerous Words on the Web
June 04, 2007 1:34 PM
You run a four percent chance of picking up spyware or a computer virus if you go to site you find on a web search engine. It's getting better, but there's still a lot of nasty stuff out there. This according to the newest survey by McAfee, Inc., the maker of antivirus software.
Quoting McAfee: "Today’s update shows that while the overall safety risk to search engine users declined by about 1 percentage point, sponsored results--those paid for by advertisers--remain significantly more risky than non-sponsored results. Overall, McAfee estimates United States consumers make approximately 276 million monthly searches that lead to Web sites that could compromise online safety."
The survey is posted HERE.
McAfee says it surveyed the five largest search engines--Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask--which together account for 93% of the searches made on the web. AOL was safest (2.9% of sites were rated "red" or "yellow" by McAfee); Yahoo was riskiest (5.4%), though these are not major differences.
What's most dangerous to search for? Digital music seems to be near the top:
--"Bearshare" (45.9 percent risky results)
--"Limewire" (37.1 percent)
--"Kazaa" (34.9 percent)
--"Winmix" (32 percent).
Other risky search terms: “screensavers” (42.0%) and “wallpapers” (31.1%). Best to find your own.
Scam sites are 3.2% of all sponsored listings. Steer clear, McAfee says, of sites offering free software, ringtones with too-good-to-be-true promises, and work-at-home schemes.
Keep in mind, of course, that McAfee benefits from such a survey; they're trying to sell software to protect you from all these looming threats. But they do point out that 80 percent of all the websites people visit are found through search engines, and with people doing 43 searches a month on something like 240 million computers in the U.S., that's a lot of searches.
June 4, 2007 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (12)
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Intriguing study and even more intriguing results! It seems that the "sponsored sites" found in an online search are inherently more risky than the "organic results" of the same search. Since the search engine companies make their money from their lists of sponsored sites, you'd think that those sites would be more dependable than the others, wouldn't you? No matter what, though, a 96% chance of NOT finding a virus from any particular result of a search engine seems to me to be a perfectly acceptable risk, probably less in the cases of those who keep their antivirus/firewall/spyware/adware software scrupulously up-to-date or those who use the Mac platformwhere viruses just aren't as predominant.
Posted by: chuck | Jun 4, 2007 2:35:24 PM
You are absolutely right! I got a nasty virus from Limewire. Luckily, Norton caught it, but it slow my computer down and definitely left me vulnerable for a while. Good article!
Posted by: Dawn | Jun 4, 2007 7:58:51 PM
so.... i cant use limewire anymore?????
(WAHHHHHHHHH!!!)
Posted by: bob | Jun 4, 2007 9:56:44 PM
With respect, individuals who use these types of software deserve to become victim of a computer virus. The best method to prevent an infection is changing your behavior, not an anti-virus software. Until people control there tedious behavior on the Internet you will always become a victim of an attack.
Posted by: Chris | Jun 4, 2007 11:03:12 PM
Who cares what McAfee says about anything. The head honcho of this organization brags he kill birds for relaxation on PBS TV... Where do these people come from.
Posted by: Dennis | Jun 4, 2007 11:29:39 PM
Whilst killing birds (on PBS TV or in his leisure time) may not be a tasteful activity, that does not disqualify his ability to comment on viruses.
Posted by: Bill | Jun 4, 2007 11:55:03 PM
I think Ned Potter looks a lot like Bill Paxton in the photo on this Science & Society page.
Posted by: Missy | Jun 5, 2007 1:09:50 AM
This is just the boys at McAfee drumming up trade. The worst search is supposedly ‘Bearshare’, followed by ‘Limewire’. I’ve just googled both and had a quick trawl through the first 5 pages of each. No problems there that I can see. Not a single sponsored result either. I have bang up to date virus protection, a good firewall and I keep an eye out for other spyware/malware with Ad-Aware. I also set up a restore point before doing this so I could blithely click around without worrying about it. As well as visiting dozens of the sites and clicking around them in a random manner I downloaded and installed Limewire and several plug-ins for it. AVG said all the files I downloaded were fine. After I’d installed everything I ran Ad-Aware and Spybot. No problems reported by either. Not as exhaustive a test as McAfee ran but enough to convince me the report is nonsense.
Posted by: Mick | Jun 5, 2007 6:11:11 AM
I also use P2P a lot. And I mean a lot. Not Limewire or Bearshare. I download torrents all the time though and use eMule a fair bit. I never have problems with torrents. Sometimes dodgy stuff comes through on eMule but it gets picked up by my virus protection so that's not a problem. Educate and protect yourself and then relax and have fun.
Posted by: Mick | Jun 5, 2007 6:15:38 AM
Be careful thinking that 96% of results being safe is acceptable risk. If that is true, after following 20 search results your odds of safety drop below 50%. After 100 searches the odds of safety drop to less than 2%. I would guess that there are some people who hit viruses all the time with questionable searches that skew the total statistics.
I usually search for pretty specific terms, and not the kinds of things McAfee warned against. I have not seen any evidence of viruses, etc., and my protection software doesn't flag anything.
Posted by: Wes | Jun 5, 2007 10:55:57 AM
This post is a bit misleading. It's not the searches themselves that heighten one's risk, but the sites yielded by the searches. So, to say that one should go and find screensavers on one's own doesn't help at all (it's not even clear what it would mean to find them "on one's own" -- does it mean that one shouldn't use a search engine to get to the same sites that a search engine would lead one to?).
Just doesn't make sense.
Posted by: Fabio Escobar | Jun 17, 2007 10:42:20 PM
Note from Ned--
Sorry if you felt misled, Fabio. The point made by McAfee's report was that a search for "screensavers" (or another of their risky words) was more likely to lead you to a site with malware than a more specific search. (If you want some nice wallpaper, a lot of people suggest museums, or pictures you've taken yourself.) And, I agree, it's not a search engine that'll give your computer malware; the risk is from sites the search may turn up. If I didn't make that clear enough in my opening line, my apologies.
Posted by: Ned Potter | Jun 18, 2007 12:12:17 PM
Post a comment
