Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms: Lyrics, Screensavers
May 30th, 2009McAfee, one of the world’s largest security technology company, has revealed the most dangerous search terms on the internet and say that searches for Free Music Downloads, Lyrics, or Screensavers are very likely to lead to Adware or Malware laden sites.
McAfee researched over 2600 popular keywords and found that the riskiest set of keyword variations was “screensavers” – 6 out of top 10 search results contain malware! The single riskiest search term “lyrics” – one in every 2 sites will have malware!
Free is not exactly free – clicking on search results with word “free” has a 21.3 percent chance of infecting your computer with spyware, spam, adware, viruses and other malware. Even “Work from home” searches can be about 4 times riskier than the average risk for all popular terms. Other risky terms noted were Rihanna, Webkinz, Powerball, iPhone, Jonas Brothers, Twilight…
Download the McAfee report – The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms (.pdf) and read the results in detail.
The reports also lists riskiest search terms country wise.
US Most Dangerous Search Terms – word unscrambler
US Most Dangerous Economic Crisis Terms – IRS stimulus checks
US Most Dangerous Free Terms – free music downloads
US Most Dangerous Health Terms – phentermine
US Most Dangerous Shopping Terms - lowes
US Most Dangerous Twilight Terms – zelda twilight princess walkthrough
United Kingdom’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – Bebo
The Netherlands’ Most Dangerous Search Terms – lyrics
Canada’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – lyrics
Spain’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – Anatomia de grey
Italy’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – Istruzione
Germany’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – schüler vz
France’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – poker
India’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – waptrick
Australia’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – credit, hotmail
Mexico’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – wisin y yandel
Chile’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – descargar google
Brazil’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – globo
New Zealand’s Most Dangerous Search Terms – lyrics
Earlier McAfee had also reported that Hong Kong (.hk) is the most dangerous country domain name and Brad Pitt is the most dangerous celebrity to search online. If you are still searching for screensavers, be warned.
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These screensavers are boon to malwares users download them unknowingly and get infected their computer.
It’s very valuable information. i just got the report. i like free stuff myself and hoping this will tell me maybe to have second thought. thank you
Wonderful ebits…thanks
screensavers are always come with / bundled with adware program or even spyware/malware!
Heh, it’s something of a tradition for screensavers to be used as trojans. Back in the day, people used to email out all their virii as .scr files as they were executable and people were more willing to run them than they were .exe files.
Thanks for the exposure. My laptop had crushed because of this kind of things.
oh, very useful info! thanks