Users Are at Risk When Using Internet Search Engines, Finds McAfee Study
Wednesday, 17 May 2006
McAfee, Inc., using research from the McAfee SiteAdvisor team, has released a groundbreaking study co-authored by Ben Edelman, noted spyware researcher and an advisor to McAfee, of the safety of the Internet search engines that shows search engine users are at risk of clicking through to Web sites that can compromise their online safety.
The investigation, which studied the five major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Ask) was initiated in January and concluded in April, found that even common search terms can lead users to risky sites.
The study found, among other things, that all of the major search engines returned risky sites in their search results for popular keywords. Dangerous sites soared to as much as 72 percent of results for certain popular keywords, such as "free screensavers," "digital music," "popular software," and "singers."
The study also finds that "sponsored" results – those paid for by advertisers – are more dangerous than non-sponsored results. On average, 8.5 percent of sponsored links were found to be dangerous versus 3.1 percent of non-sponsored links.
"Search engines clearly play a critical role in Internet use: As a convenient starting point for online browsing, they're estimated to account for about half of all site visits," said Chris Dixon, who heads the McAfee SiteAdvisor product team. "But economically motivated purveyors of spam, adware and other online problems quickly follow where consumers go online, in this case directly to search engine results. Today, based on browsing trends, we estimate that US Internet users make 285 million clicks to hostile sites every month through search queries."
"Search engines are too important to become just another online activity dominated by the worst elements on the Internet," Edelman noted. "Users need and deserve a way to search safely, and the security community can help."
To see a full report on the McAfee search engine study, please visit http://www.siteadvisor.com/studies/search_safety_may2006.html
The new study is the first comprehensive examination of search engine safety, and is possible only because of the massive database of site-safety ratings built by the SiteAdvisor team over the last year. To develop these ratings, the company conducts automated tests that analyze Web sites for a broad range of user problems: exploits, downloads containing spyware, adware and or other unwanted programs, pop-ups, and e-mail submission forms.
McAfee acquired SiteAdvisor on April 5, 2006. McAfee is utilizing the technology and personnel to pioneer web safety by testing and rating, on an ongoing basis, nearly every trafficked site on the Internet. The software, which is a free download, clearly identifies potentially dangerous sites that have engaged in "social engineering" attacks such as spyware, adware, spam, browser attacks, and online scams.