Many Search Results Include Dangerous, Malicious
Links: Free Protection Available
New, free Website rating tool, Norton Safe Web Lite,
protects seniors from risky search results
July 29, 2010 - Senior citizens, most just becoming
comfortable with using the internet, may be among those in the most
danger from well-disguised malicious links that are presented by search engines.
According to a new Norton study, more than one in three of the
top-trending search terms returned at least 10 percent malicious
results, putting people's computers and personal information at risk
from cybercrime.
It turns out that between February and May,
searching for "tropical dreams sweepstakes" could actually have been a
nightmare, and searching for "red hot laugh riot" could have been
anything but funny. At the peak of their popularity, these two
particular search terms returned a staggering 99 malicious links out of
the first 100 results.
This week, celebrity news, online gaming and
diseases were among the most poisoned top-trending topics, with terms
such as "constance francesca hilton," "atomic dove" and "melorheostosis"
returning more than 45 percent malicious links out of the first 100
results.
Free tool identifies risky sites
To counter these search engine optimization (SEO)
poisoned threats, Norton has introduced Norton Safe Web Lite, a free
downloadable tool that identifies risky sites before users click on them
in search results. Once downloaded from
http://safeweb.norton.com/lite, Norton Safe Web Lite is accessible
as a small toolbar within either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.
The free toolbar is powered by Norton Safe Web
site-rating technology, which is included in Norton Internet Security
and Norton 360. Catching risky results before clicking through is
critical because nearly 60 percent of unsafe sites identified by Norton
Safe Web are found to contain drive-by downloads - threats that can
infect a PC without requiring the user to download or install files.
Norton also offers free Facebook protection
Additionally, the Norton Safe Web scanner for
Facebook, which is also free, now offers a convenient "Enable Auto-Scan"
option to identify any malicious links on users' news feeds. The Norton
Safe Web scanner for Facebook is available at
http://apps.facebook.com/nortonsafeweb.
"Cybercriminals are always looking for the next
opportunity to find victims, as evidenced by the high volume of SEO
poisoning. Unfortunately for consumers, simply searching for a popular
topic and clicking on a poisoned link can have serious consequences,"
said Jens Meggers, vice president of engineering, Norton. "Consumers
need to arm themselves with tools like Norton Safe Web Lite that are
specifically designed to defend against these types of threats."
The Norton study monitored a major search engine's
top 300 trending search terms and analyzed the top 30,000 search results
daily for SEO poisoning over a three-month period, between February and
May 2010.
The search topics ran the gamut from sporting
events to song lyrics to breaking news on criminal cases. Using
unethical techniques to "game" search engine algorithms, hackers are
poisoning search results, taking advantage of spikes in a topic's
popularity to redirect computer users to misleading applications such as
fake antivirus scanners.
Some days, more than 250 of the top 300 daily
search terms returned more than 10 percent malicious links within the
first 100 results, according to Norton. Clicking on these poisoned
search results could infect a user's PC and result in exposing personal
information to cybercriminals.
About Norton Safe Web Lite
Norton Safe Web Lite is a free website rating tool
designed to let users surf, search and shop online safely. Norton Safe
Web servers crawl millions of websites and use signature-based file
scanning, intrusion detection engines, behavioral detection and analysis
to identify potentially dangerous sites directly from searches via a
browser toolbar.
The Norton Safe Web Lite toolbar is available for
Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows Vista users in English only, and works
on Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher and Mozilla Firefox 3.0 or higher.
All current users of Norton 360 or Norton Internet Security already
receive a full-featured Norton toolbar as part of their subscription,
which in addition to Norton Safe Web rating technology also provides
built-in real-time antiphishing protection and Identity Safe, which
helps manage logins and passwords.
About Norton From Symantec (company
statement)
Symantec's Norton products protect consumers from
traditional threats with antivirus, anti-spyware and phishing
protection, as well as bots, drive-by downloads and identity theft--
while also being light on system resources. The company also provides
services such as online backup and PC tuneup, and is a trusted source
for family online safety. Friend us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/norton
and follow @NortonOnline on Twitter.
About Symantec (company statement)
Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC),
Mountain View, Calif., is a global leader in providing security, storage
and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations
secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and
services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and
efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored.
More information is available at
http://www.symantec.com.
