Just One Click Away....

According to a Spyware Quiz conducted by McAfee SiteAdvisor, 97 percent of Internet users are just one click away from infecting their PCs with spyware, adware, or some other kind of unwanted software.

Even though the threat of spyware has received extensive media coverage, just 3 percent of the 14,000-plus consumers who took SiteAdvisor's spyware quiz received perfect scores.

The survey challenged Web surfers to test their ability to detect which sites in a number of popular categories were free of adware or spyware. The examples in the quiz are taken from more than 3 million Web sites which SiteAdvisor has independently tested and rated for Web safety issues like spyware and spam. The first part of the quiz presented users with pairs of sites and asked them to pick which one of the pair was safe. The second part presented a series of file sharing software sites and asked which ones were spyware and adware free. The test has been available since March.

Among the survey's conclusions:

• Based on their choices, most users (65 percent) would have been infected with adware or spyware many times over.
• The presence of national advertisers and a clean, uncluttered design seem to trick respondents into thinking a site is safe.
• Even users with a high "Spyware IQ" have a nearly 100 percent chance of visiting a dangerous site during 30 days of typical online searching and browsing activity.
• Users often miss the fine print that allows a dangerous Web site to claim it installs unwanted software legally.

Sites were selected from popular categories screensavers, smileys, free games, song lyrics, and file-sharing applications all of which are also notorious for distributing spyware, adware and other unwanted programs. The quiz was specifically designed to determine how adept users are at visually detecting the potential for intrusive downloads on a site. Quiz takers did particularly poorly on the pair of lyrics sites. One possible reason the unsafe site had advertising from well-known brands like Circuit City and Monster.com that may have served to legitimize it

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:11 AM  Permalink