p2pnet - rss feed: McAfee SiteAdvisor ’study’
p2pnet.net news:- According to a recent study by McAfee’s SiteAdvisor group, “over 276 million Web searches each month link to sites flagged as dangerous by SiteAdvisor” and, “Overall, 4 percent of search results link to dangerous sites, as do almost 7 percent of sponsored links,” says PC Magazine.
And, “Search terms related to music and technology are most likely to return sites with spyware and other malicious code,” says Associated Press, going on, “Some 42 percent of the results using the term ’screensavers,’ for example, led to sites flagged with a ‘red’ warning or a cautionary ‘yellow’ by McAfee Inc.’s SiteAdvisor service. Other keywords McAfee deemed risky include names of file-sharing software - ‘BearShare,’ ‘LimeWire’ and ‘Kazaa’.”
Just how credible is McAfee’s SiteAdvisor?
p2pnet has been smeared with the Big Red X because under “Online affiliations for p2pnet.net,” the company says, “When we tested this site we found links to blubster.com, which we found to be a distributor of downloads some people consider adware, spyware or other unwanted programs.”
p2pnet isn’t “affiliated” with any site, anywhere. Blubster is a long standing p2pnet advertiser, and we’re very glad for that.
And the McAfee rating comes notwithstanding the fact that of 20 “McAfee Reviewer and Web site owner comments,” 16 unequivocally rated p2pnet green for good.
Moreover, “our software is totally free of viruses, spyware and unwanted programs,” Blubster creator, Pablo Soto, promises, also pointing out that McAfee bundled its software with Blubster.
In short, the McAfee SiteAdvisor has it wrong. Dead wrong. But is it willing to do the right thing and admit it made a mistake and de-list p2pnet? It is not.
Meanwhile, “Yahoo! had the most reds and yellows, at 5.4 percent,” says PC Magazine. “Google, AOL, and Ask have improved since last May; Yahoo! and MSN have gotten worse.”
Music and high-tech searches, “still rank high, and searches relating to peer-to-peer file-sharing even higher - for example, over 45 percent of the results for ‘BearShare’ were bad,” says the post. “Not too surprisingly, ‘adult’ keywords also get a lot of bad results, especially sponsored ones. According to McAfee, the number of risky sites in sponsored links for adult keywords is up nearly 75 percent since last year.”
Also See:
PC Magazine - McAfee Reports Drop in Malicious Search Results, June 4, 2007
Associated Press - Study: Music, tech search terms riskiest, June 4, 2007
Big Red X - McAfee adamant! p2pnet stays Red!, June 1, 2007
totally free of viruses - McAfee takes it wrong, May 29, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 4th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
A ’screen saver’ is “high tech”??????????
If that’s the case for McAfee, then they truly __*DO*__ have extemely __*BIG*__ problems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ROTFLMAO! @ screen saver = high tech ……shaking head in disbelief…
YES, screen savers CAN be harbingers of some very nasty mal-ware but giving them “high tech” status??? Well, that’s just plain deliberate stupidity!!!!!!
June 4th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
It sort of shows the mentality of McAfee and who they think they are tailoring their products for. If high tech is a screen saver, they are targeting a really dumbed down user.
People that show up at places like this are the exception to the rule and for the most part are the early adapters. High tech has an entirely different meaning and expectation than it does to the average internet user I gather.
It is very obvious that McAfee has a changing definition as to what is malware to include a product they once endorsed and now classify as a hazard. I wonder just how flexible that definition is but suspect I already know. I wonder how the RIAA site is classed? Especially that on-line confession site that started up with the p2p malware specials being advertised until the web started to take notice? Somehow I suspect they will have very little problems with it. Yet you can be sure the recorder is running over time at such a site, gathering all the data it can get.
The RIAA has long been known for sponsoring malware on p2p sites even though it doesn’t make mention of owning up to it in public. One has only to go back and look at the practices of Loudeye to see it in action. Loudeye was under contract to act on the RIAAs behalf to seed bad files and trojaned files on to the p2p nets. I also suspect if you go search for “free mp3s” you won’t have to wait very long to really get a freebee. Luckily those that do get for free don’t find it that way.
Business makes strange bedfellows, such as christian movements endorsing the cartels over pron offerings to be found on p2p, claiming it exposes the young to sexual overtones or worse. No mention is made of looking at what their bedfellow offers. As bad if not worse than the p2p sites. Now we have McAfee saying that their past bedfellow isn’t good enough today.
The corporation is greedy and again it shows through just how that greed affects business as usual.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Senator Joe McCarthy, of the House Un-American Activities Committee, sits behind his table in Senate chambers, and, in a deep gravely voice, badgers Jon with “Are you now, or have you ever been, owner of a website that links to others which either are, of and by themselves, or possessed of links to malware and other assorted bits of nastyness?”. Jon stutters in outrage, then settles down and proclaims “No, Senator; your suppositions have not one single grain of truth [to them]”. Upon which, the Senator shakes a piece of paper in his hand and states, to the chamber-at-large, “I have here in my hand a list of malware sites which p2pnet.net links to [etc., etc.]”.
McAfee and Senator McCarthy would have not 1 whit of problem understanding each other.