Thursday, December 03, 2009
Surfing the Internet can sometimes feel like playing Russian roulette when visiting websites for the first time, because of the growing risk of encountering viruses or other malware with a simple click of a mouse. One way to minimize this risk is by taking note of software manufacturer McAfee’s latest report (Mapping the Mal Web), which includes statistics on which domains have the highest risk of infection.
For instance, urls ending in “.cm”—which originate in the country of Cameroon—pose the greatest risk (36.7%) of picking up a virus. Internet users often end up on .cm by mistakenly leaving out the “o” in “.com,” and malware spreaders take advantage of this common error.
The ubiquitous “.com” domain itself also is risky, with 32.2% of all sites checked by McAfee containing some kind of unwanted malware. The Chinese domain ending, “.cn” is the third most dangerous at 23.4%.
Last year, it was Hong Kong (.hk) that had the most infected domains, according to McAfee. But Hong Kong officials have taken action since then, and this year its risk rating plummeted to 1.43%.
Romania (.ro) is noted in the report for its high risk factor (21%) when it comes to downloads, as is China (.cn) at 18.6%.
The safest domains are “.gov” (government), “.edu” (education) and those of Japan (.jp), Ireland (.ie) and Croatia (.hr).
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Mapping the Mal Web: The World’s Riskiest Domains (McAfee) (PDF)
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