5% of All Web Traffic Unsafe

OnFour writes "The MIT-backed startup behind SiteAdvisor has slapped a red "X" warning label on approximately 5 percent of all Web traffic and warned that there are roughly one billion monthly visits to Web pages that aren't safe for surfing. About 2 percent of all Web traffic was given the "yellow" caution rating." A more general SiteAdvisor blog entry overview was covered earlier on Slashdot.

Unsafe to whom?

[Penguinoflight]

It is critical to understand what component is actually unsafe before any action can be taken to counter it. Likely of the 5% of "unsafe" internet traffic, 4% of it is from a perspective of sites that are not safe for MSIE. Of course there is no reason for any traffic to go to a "unsafe" site, as they do not have good content. OTOH, I could probably get away with saying that 20% of the web is useless, and not get a counter argument.

This study really only shows that most web users do not think about their safety; We already knew that considering they are using MSIE.

site blocking predicted

[Russ Nelson]

Many years ago on the com-priv mailing list, I posted a message "announcing" the creation of a company which would sit on your network, watching the sites that your users visited. When a "bad" site was visited, it would forge a TCP RST to close down the connection. Various categories of badness were proposed, with varying fees. I thought "This is an idea too stupid for words, so I'll put it into words so everyone can see how stupid it is." Well, I had several parties contact me for availability and pricing, because they WANTED to censor their users' browsing. I was so naive.
-russ

eWeek -- "Yellow" according to SiteAdvisor

[mnolet]

I find it fairly ironic that the article is on eweek -- which according to SiteAdvisor is "kind of spammy"

After entering our e-mail address on this site we received 3.2 e-mails per week. They were somewhat spammy. We also had difficuly unsubscribing.

Helping user

[michelcultivo]

This is a great initiative to help user surfing the (insecure) webb today, I have a lot of examples of users that only click "Yes" on every website that asks to install something because if you don't do that you can't see the pr0n. Someone known anothers projects like this or this is the first?

Astalavista, baby

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.siteadvisor.com/lookup/?q=www.astalavis ta.box.sk [siteadvisor.com]
Results 0 - 0 of 0 total results for www.astalavista.box.sk.

Re:Unsafe to whom?

[Siffy]

You could offer them a hosts file that'd block most that garbage. But that'd take money away from your business. Your dialup customers would love you for it though. The hosts file on my firewall/router/fileserver has 10148 lines in it now (I can send it to you if you'd like). That many somestimes makes a windows box crap itself unfortunately.

Useful tool for me, too

[flooey]

I took a look at SiteAdvisor and I actually think it'll be useful for me, as an experienced user, as well, surprisingly. I don't think I'll have much use for the red X junk, I know not to install random crap on my computer, but their analysis of downloads could be quite useful. You can pull up the list of all the modifications a program makes to your system, even for green files. If you ever wanted to know exactly what registry keys Google Desktop adds, for instance, you can just look it up [siteadvisor.com].

Way out of date

[harlows_monkeys]

They are using PestPatrol's database, from way before CA bought PestPatrol. It's woefully inaccurate and out of date. SiteAdvisor is an interesting idea, but worthless in its current form.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:so now we'll see

[hackstraw]

And the continuation link http://www.bottom95.com/ [bottom95.com] takes you to an "Appliance" page.

For fun, try this: http://yahoosucks.com/ [yahoosucks.com] Its a "Search the Web" site. "yahoosucks.com What you need, when you need it" Yes, the site says that!

Then follow the "Yahoo Sucks" [domainsponsor.com] link which is hidden away in a frame.

Of course, you can buy "Yahoo Sucks" on eBay. But further down the list of useful links there is Find yahoo sucks [upspiral.com] link which exclaims, "Your relevant result is a click away!" So click on it, and you will end up here [upspiral.com] where the sponsored results containing: "yahoo sucks" yields a "Watch Porn Movies Online" link for "15 Minutes Free To Watch Any Movie Over 30,000 Full Length XXX Movies" site.

I really feel sorry for "normal" people that mistype an URL or click on the wrong link. I know of no other place on this planet where people take that much time, money, and effort to be that deceitfully, yet professional looking looking storefront that is looking for someone to scam. To me, it seems easier and more fun to actually provide something of value to people instead of picking the pockets of people not paying attention.