Stop me before I search again……..

May 12, 2006 in Tech

According to a story in this morning's WSJ, McAfee will be releasing a report today that demonstrates that a major source of spyware, malware, and other online junk is: search engines.

Search Sites Tied
To Viruses, Spyware

McAfee Unit Study Says
Results Pages Have Links
To Risky Web Addresses

By KEVIN J. DELANEY
May 12, 2006; Page A16

New research scheduled to be released today by McAfee Inc. unit SiteAdvisor Inc. links the epidemic of spyware, viruses and other nasty online traps to search engines.

The study, based on thousands of searches using the
most-popular search queries and providers, shows that the results pages
of the biggest search engines include links to sites that can infect
consumers' personal computers or expose them to nuisances such as spam
email. SiteAdvisor found that roughly 5% of the search results on
average were risky sites on the first five results pages. That included
about 3% of the normal Web-search results and 9% of the paid
advertisements the search engines serve up alongside them.

By comparison, the company said, about 2% of the total
of 3.3 million Web sites rated in its database, accounting for 95% of
all Web traffic, expose consumers to risks or nuisances.