Comments on: The Most Dangerous Words on the Web

By: Ned Potter

Ned Potter — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:12:17 +0000

Note from Ned–
Sorry if you felt misled, Fabio. The point made by McAfee’s report was that a search for “screensavers” (or another of their risky words) was more likely to lead you to a site with malware than a more specific search. (If you want some nice wallpaper, a lot of people suggest museums, or pictures you’ve taken yourself.) And, I agree, it’s not a search engine that’ll give your computer malware; the risk is from sites the search may turn up. If I didn’t make that clear enough in my opening line, my apologies.

By: Fabio Escobar

Fabio Escobar — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:42:20 +0000

This post is a bit misleading. It’s not the searches themselves that heighten one’s risk, but the sites yielded by the searches. So, to say that one should go and find screensavers on one’s own doesn’t help at all (it’s not even clear what it would mean to find them “on one’s own” — does it mean that one shouldn’t use a search engine to get to the same sites that a search engine would lead one to?).
Just doesn’t make sense.

By: Wes

Wes — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 14:55:57 +0000

Be careful thinking that 96% of results being safe is acceptable risk. If that is true, after following 20 search results your odds of safety drop below 50%. After 100 searches the odds of safety drop to less than 2%. I would guess that there are some people who hit viruses all the time with questionable searches that skew the total statistics.
I usually search for pretty specific terms, and not the kinds of things McAfee warned against. I have not seen any evidence of viruses, etc., and my protection software doesn’t flag anything.

By: Mick

Mick — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 10:15:38 +0000

I also use P2P a lot. And I mean a lot. Not Limewire or Bearshare. I download torrents all the time though and use eMule a fair bit. I never have problems with torrents. Sometimes dodgy stuff comes through on eMule but it gets picked up by my virus protection so that’s not a problem. Educate and protect yourself and then relax and have fun.

By: Mick

Mick — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 10:11:11 +0000

This is just the boys at McAfee drumming up trade. The worst search is supposedly ‘Bearshare’, followed by ‘Limewire’. I’ve just googled both and had a quick trawl through the first 5 pages of each. No problems there that I can see. Not a single sponsored result either. I have bang up to date virus protection, a good firewall and I keep an eye out for other spyware/malware with Ad-Aware. I also set up a restore point before doing this so I could blithely click around without worrying about it. As well as visiting dozens of the sites and clicking around them in a random manner I downloaded and installed Limewire and several plug-ins for it. AVG said all the files I downloaded were fine. After I’d installed everything I ran Ad-Aware and Spybot. No problems reported by either. Not as exhaustive a test as McAfee ran but enough to convince me the report is nonsense.

By: Missy

Missy — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 05:09:50 +0000

I think Ned Potter looks a lot like Bill Paxton in the photo on this Science & Society page.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 03:55:03 +0000

Whilst killing birds (on PBS TV or in his leisure time) may not be a tasteful activity, that does not disqualify his ability to comment on viruses.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 03:29:39 +0000

Who cares what McAfee says about anything. The head honcho of this organization brags he kill birds for relaxation on PBS TV… Where do these people come from.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 03:03:12 +0000

With respect, individuals who use these types of software deserve to become victim of a computer virus. The best method to prevent an infection is changing your behavior, not an anti-virus software. Until people control there tedious behavior on the Internet you will always become a victim of an attack.

By: bob

bob — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 01:56:44 +0000

so…. i cant use limewire anymore?????
(WAHHHHHHHHH!!!)