Posted on 05/24/2006 5:04:26 AM PDT by cloud8
Don't try this at home--not if you want to have a working computer. Search for "Free Screensavers," we're told, and 64% of the sites you'll find are the kinds that can gum up your machine with spyware or a computer virus.
A team of researchers, let by Ben Edelman and Hannah Rosenbaum of a British firm called Site Advisor, tried entering 1,394 popular search terms into the web's most popular search engines--Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Ask.com. They came up with a chart you may find both amusing and sobering. Even if you search for something as harmless as "I love you," they report, 19.7% of the links they found on Google were ones they would rate as "red" or "yellow" on their scale of riskiness for malware of some sort or another.
Here's their list of the eight most dangerous search terms:
1. Free screensavers
2. Bearshare
3. Screensavers
4. Winmx
5. Limewire
6. Download Yahoo Messenger
7. Lime wire
8. Free ringtones
If you follow your own common sense--keep your antivirus software up to date, don't download software offered by a weird site you don't know--you'll probably be fine. Serious searches seem quite safe (I was grateful, personally, to see that "Peter Jennings" scored 0%), but even if you look for "God," say Edelman and Rosenbaum, 1.2% of the hits you'll get could cause you trouble. (Sponsored links--the ones paid for by advertisers--tended to be somewhat riskier to visit than "organic" ones--the ones the search engine found on its own.)
Edelman has posted more HERE. He describes himself as a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Harvard, having already gotten his law degree there.
Don't you hate bright people?
They are file sharing programs that allow folks to connect to other computers and share with them - primarily music files. There are so many viruses passed along via these programs (mainly embedded in the shared files) that it is a wonder folks still use them.
Warez is one you want to stay away from as well.
Thanks.
XXX...is another
May Thanks.
Oddly enough, searching for band song lyrics will often getcha nailed big time, too.
Been there, regretted that.
Bearshare and Lime Wire are file sharing programs in the Napster vein. I am not familiar with Winmx.
I've been to Warez(Juarez). They've got shots for that stuff now.........
ewwww. ... I don't even want to imagine.
Try PC Tools' SPYWARE DOCTOR free at Downloads.com. ...........
Ironically, alot of popup spyware is 'sold' as 'free' or 'trial' spyware clearners.
Let me help: These are all sex terms. You take your Limewire and put it in the woman's Winmx, and this act is known as Bearsharing.
Trend Micro has been the absolute best anti-anything program I have ever used. My system runs smoothly, it catches EVERYTHING and I can compute with ease.
Too late. Wanted a nifty Christmas screensaver, and now I'm inundated with spam : (
It took weeks to clean out the viruses, malware, and spybots.
"I use Spybot, Ad-aware and Free AV. Are there any other suggestions of apps that might catch the odd virus?"
Either Norton or McAffee. The latest versions include spyware detectors. ZoneAlarm is a personal firewall that has some really good features as well.
Top sends
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