Search queries on major search engines turned up lists of sites that might compromise online safety. 72% of search results for keywords such as,”free screensavers”, “digital music”, “popular software” resulted in sites that harm users through spyware, spam, scams, or other bad practices, according to McAfee.


Search queries on major search engines turned up lists of sites that might compromise online safety.

72% of search results for keywords such as,”free screensavers”, “digital music”, “popular software” resulted in sites that harm users through spyware, spam, scams, or other bad practices, according to McAfee.

McAfee has released a study of search engines. McAfee report “shows search engine users are at risk of clicking through to web sites that can compromise their online safety”. McAfee calls these sites as “risky”. [source]

The findings of the study include the following:

– Data related to search queries turning up with “risky sites” for major search engines are as follows:

– – 3.9% of MSN search results had sites compromising online safety.

– -The percentage of “risky sites” was 5.3% for Google and 6.1% for Ask.

– According to McAfee, the US consumers make 285 million clicks on “hostile sites” every month through search queries.

McAfee defines “hostile sites” as: “Hostile Web sites might seek to harm users or take advantage of them ““ whether through spyware, spam, scams, or other bad practices ““ because search engines often do not filter these sites from their results”.

– “Hostile sites” have reached up to 72% of results for certain ‘risky’ keywords. Such keywords include: ‘free screensavers’, ‘bearshare’, ‘kazaa’, ‘download music’, and ‘free games’.”

– Search queries on the major search engines resulted in sites that compromise users’ online safety

– Sponsored results contained two to four times more sites compromising online safety

– Results on page 1 were safer than results for pages 2-5

Links

Visit McAfee for more informaiton on the security company.

For more information on this present study, go to the [Press Release].

To Read the complete report of the study, go to Site Advisor Studies.

 

 

 

 

 

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