Forum Moderators: phranque
Not sure if I should be surprised about the figures... and the 'leading' .tlds:
New report identifies dangerous Web domains [news.yahoo.com]
JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer
...
McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are ".hk" (Hong Kong), ".cn" (China) and ".info" (information).Of all ".hk" sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of ".cn" sites and 11.7 percent of ".info" sites that way.
A little more than 5 percent of the sites under the ".com" domain — the world's most popular — were identified as dangerous.
...
this was funny:
Where McAfee found some of the least-risky domain names:• ".gov" (government use), with 0.05 percent flagged;
• ".jp" (Japan), with 0.1 percent flagged and
• ".au" (Australia), with 0.3 percent flagged.
...
Australia is... among the safest places on the Internet? *heh*
Didn't see that one coming.
Also that 0.05 percent of corrupted .gov sites makes one wonder.
is it something like: '- Wellyah, the department of Preventing Hackers From Breaking Into Governmental Systems ( PHFBIG ) is doing a great job I'd say, *only* 0.05 percent of all governmental websites carry the risk of loading malicious software onto citizens' computers...' ( and then imagine what else the hackers do on those servers).
[edited by: Miamacs at 11:43 am (utc) on June 4, 2008]
As a long time Internet Marketer, I would never, ever touch a .info TLD and quite a few others. The writing was on the wall way back when these were first released. And we all know there are exceptions to the rule so there is no need for the .info brigade to start breathing down my neck. ;)
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of companies are in the business of registering domain names; some are large and well known, while others are small and less reputable, offering their services on the cheap and with flimsy or no background checks to lure in more customers.
All of this trickles downward. Of course using Registrar information as a means for determining which of the Registrars have the most abuse might be a bit challenging. But, if you come down to the host level, the playing field changes. That's when I think this comes into play...
Trusted Hosting Environments
Are you at risk in your current hosting situation?
[webmasterworld.com...]
I see a lot of people looking for the lowest hosting prices, cheap this, cheap that. I'd be very careful as to what you are getting yourself into when moving into a "cheap" neighborhood.
me too, considering how many elected government officials are corrupt, I'd expect the domains to follow suit. >grin<
The McAfee report is based on results from 9.9 million Web sites that were tested in 265 domains for serving malicious code, excessive pop-up ads or forms to fill out that actually are tools for harvesting e-mail addresses for sending spam.
Excessive pop-ups? Dangerous? Ummm . . okay.
.Info domains are especially dangerous? Especially if you are naive enough to place your email address into a online form?
Maybe McAfee's report should be captioned "Online Forms Dangerous!"
Why don't we tell the real truth? The danger isn't the gTLD called .Info. The danger is
No, it isn't the .info gTLD or any other ccTLD that is the "security problem". Spammers and evildoers will simply default to the next cheap option if the cost of a .info domain is increased - because it's not the gTLD that's the problem. The minute you begin believing it is the TLD that poses a special risk that becomes the last minute before you get nailed by a download from a .Org or .Net or .Com domain.
[edited by: Webwork at 4:44 pm (utc) on June 4, 2008]
McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are ".hk" (Hong Kong), ".cn" (China) and ".info" (information).
I might like to get a bunch of domains from .cn I only do this for my own amusement, and it is kind of fun to have lots of domains. $20 is kind of spendy for each domain though.
A little more than 5 percent of the sites under the ".com" domain — the world's most popular — were identified as dangerous
On the face of it looks like bad reporting using bad math for example
There are around 77,000,000 5.26% bad? thats aprox. 1 in 20 = 3,850,000 all dangerous? LOL
Put another way thats 1 bad .com site on every second Google page (10 results per page) that everybody searches ever.
The cynic in me observes they do stand to benefit if more people believe they need McAfee products to protect themselves, it may be however their reporting of their analysis is just genuinely flawed.
