Internet Security
This topic - I believe - is far too broad. When put into perspective, Internet Security should be at the top of the importance list. I have posted in the "Free Software" section of the site the McAfee Site Advisor, Firefox Add-On - which is a crucial part - but here I will explain further...
It is amazing of the multitude of dangerous sites on the internet. Here is a picture of a search on Google with McAfee Site Advisor for "Screensavers."
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Yet, not all searches render negative results of course. Here are some search results for "Online Free Tech Tips."
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)I was recently viewing some analysis by McAfee as well that was intresting regarding Internet Security. Here is some of the information:
"Key Findings
All the major search engines returned risky sites in their search results for popular keywords.
Overall, MSN search results had the lowest percentage (3.9%) of dangerous sites while Ask search results had the highest percentage (6.1%). Google was in between (5.3%).
Sponsored results contained two to four times as many dangerous sites as organic results.
There was little correlation between search result placement and safety. Page 1 results were only moderately safer than results for pages 2-5.
Dangerous sites soared to as much as 72% of results for certain risky keywords. Particularly dangerous keywords include "free screensavers", "bearshare", "kazaa", "download music", and "free games."
We estimate that US consumers make 285 million clicks to hostile sites every month as a result of search engine results." (http://www.siteadvisor.com/studies/search_safety_may2006.html)
It as well provided a picture depicting their findings, which can be found here.
Some more information posted on their site was titled "Mapping the Mal Web." Here is some of it:
"Introduction
Online safety risks are a truly global issue. Yet differences in threats vary significantly by country and other factors, for example:
A consumer is almost 12 times more likely to encounter a drive-by-download while surfing Russian domains as Columbian ones.
Registering at a Web site in India results in a 4.3% chance of getting spammy e-mail. Taking the same action with a domain registered in China yields a 7.2% chance.
5.2% of Vietnamese Web sites have risky downloads. Just 0.5% of Singaporean sites host such files.
2.7 million times every month, casual Web surfers visit risky Dutch Web sites. Even though Hong Kong has approximately the same percentage of risky Web sites, those risky domains receive just 52,000 clicks each month."
Generally, you will probably not want to visit sites with the following domains:
.tk (Tokelau)
.ro (Romania)
.ru (Russia)
.ws (Somoa)
.bg (Bulgaria)
.cc (Cocos Islands)
.cn (People's Republic of China)
.kr (South Korea)
.jp (Japan)
.biz (Business)
.nu (Niue)
.name (Families)
.be (Belgium)
Of course as well there are numerous other domains that are a large amount better to visit.
Here is a chart resembling the Middle Easts' risk factors/percentage of sites that are risky per country: