Privacy, Security & Virus Information

Be Careful What You Search For

Be careful what you search for is a phraseology often used by parents to their children as they set off on their life's path. However in recent years it is a warning being used by the World's leading anti virus protection program, McAfee to web surfers when they are looking for a particular term on the internet through search engines. The reason for the warning is that it transpires that today's increasingly sophisticated and web savvy hackers know quite a bit about search engine optimization (SEO) and are hiding behind web surfer's enthousiasm to find all that is new online by inserting some virus leading URL's into the web sites that feature in a particular niche.

According to McAfee, searches within the keyword term "digital music" is two times as risky to computers security with as many as twenty percent of the sites surfed being infected by malware, viruses or spam. Digital music has become so popular among hackers that it has pushed that old favourite, "porn" into second place. "Bearshare" which is a popular music download site, until recently owned by Microsoft has been awarded the dubious title of the current high risk search engine term, with almost half of the results leading to sites being "unsafe" and full of malware, while it has to be pointed out that the Bearshare site is clean of all viruses.

The reason for porn's fall from favour by the hackers is that these sites are very well protected against viruses, while digital music downloads are frequented by a different sector of the population who tend to be a lot less aware of the danger of viruses.

Other search engine terms where hackers tend to focus their energies are "screensavers" which leads to a full 42 percent of resulting sites being unsafe, with "celebrities" leading to some danger of infection. It goes without saying that all of the danger of infection from viruses in their various formats can be dramatically reduced by installing McAfee anti-virus software to the home or office computer. McAfee are true professionals in their field and make it their business to look for all the latest patterns in hacking, and close them down.

Anyone who has invested in McAfee anti-virus software can rest easy knowing that their personal security is being taken care of by experts.

 

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