5% of All Web Traffic Unsafe 204
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.
Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:4, Funny)
OK, and the "one billion monthly visits" is clickable?
Dear god does anyone else think that is the epitomy of where you could actually post tubgirl or worse and have it not only be on topic, but insightful?
ermm
crap, I think I just justified tubgirl as insightful or interesting.
I quit.
(and no, there are NO LINKS in this comment, if for no other reason than I might end up drunk and click on one of them)
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/tubgirl.com [siteadvisor.com]
tubgirl.com
[Green]
We tested this site and didn't find any significant problems.
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:3, Funny)
Not only that, SiteAdvisor (trial version!) is clearly aware that tubgirl.com links/redirects to domains including "sexmoviesonpod.com" and "naughtynati.com" (as seen in the helpful graphic).
So...I'm sold. Where do I sign up?
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:2)
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:2)
Netscape.com has a yellow download, Netscape.
CultDeadCow.com is green, with a green download. In their defense, nobody downloads and installs BackOrifice from its official homepage by accident.
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:2)
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:3, Insightful)
The thread earlier had mentioned two levels of seperation, which I think is fair. That is only asking people (or Gentoo.Org) to say "I won't do business with you, because you do business with scumbags."
~Rebecca
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:2)
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:4, Funny)
It's everywhere you want to be. (Score:2)
Companies like American Express paying hackers to stick ad servers onto people's computers bring the number up to believable proportions.
It's not the sites that get you when you run a crappy Monopoly O$. They can, of course, but people who say so are more of the "blame the user" camp than people who know what they are talking about. Study after study shows M$ PCs get whacked without the user doing anything in ever decreasing times. T
Re:It's everywhere you want to be. (Score:2)
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:2)
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:3, Insightful)
So are the people who clicked the links to them.
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:2)
Someone hit on the idea of photographing people as they were shown goatse for the first time.
The poor, poor souls........
Re:Ack, worst link ever to click (Score:2)
If you've been there you'll know what I mean.
If you haven't been, don't.
5% not safe (Score:3, Funny)
Re:5% not safe (Score:2)
Re:5% not safe (Score:2)
One place I worked the CEO would send things like pictures of coke cans being stored places they were never designed to, etc... The only unwritten rule was don't get caught with anything really dodgy.
The occasional breast etc. was normal - some even had that as their background (in fact I've never been anywhere where a bit of breast caused offence, but then I never worked in the US - they're a lot more prudish over there).
Re:5% not safe (Score:2)
You'd think that the safety rating wouldn't be so... unbalanced.
Like, 88% green, 7% yellow, 5% red or something along that line.
Re:5% not safe (Score:2)
Re:5% not safe (Score:2)
If all that was under threat was one's $HOME I guess
but on Windows if you can install an app. you can hose the system
Re:5% not safe (Score:2)
What do they mean by safe? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What do they mean by safe? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What do they mean by safe? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What do they mean by safe? (Score:2)
"Would you like to install a trojan?"
[x] Do not ask me again in future
["Yes"],"No"
To be fair, not everybody cares about staying current with Windows - I certainly don't*
*except IE, as i'm a webdeveloper.
Right (Score:2)
Re:Right (Score:2)
Re:What do they mean by safe? (Score:2)
Hey, they said they didn't care about IE :-)
/groupthink
okay (Score:2)
Re:What do they mean by safe? (Score:2)
Good analogy. That's why we have signs and guard rails and such - not to prevent you from driving off the cliff, but to help make sure you're aware of the danger and to help you not to drive off the cliff. These guys are trying to do the same thing for the Web.
I'm not saying it'll work, but it's a good idea.
What they mean is this... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What do they mean by safe? (Score:2)
with siteadvisor my son now has a 4.0 grade point average!
with siteadvisor nobody went to disreputable* sites, so only major commercial sites and personal blogs exist now!!!
(*sites that did not pay for a good rating)
with siteadvisor, millions of puppies were saved!
You can have ALL this for only $49.99! Operators are waiting to take YOUR CALL right now!
Oh wait! this is NOT going to fix th
Unsafe to whom? (Score:3, Interesting)
This study really only shows that most web users do not think about their safety; We already knew that considering they are using MSIE.
Re:Unsafe to whom? (Score:4, Insightful)
The cool thing? Most of my customers are learning, I only seem to be getting about 10% coming back for a repeat cleanup, a year ago it was over 30%.
Re:Unsafe to whom? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Unsafe to whom? (Score:2)
Re:Unsafe to whom? (Score:2)
Security company says the internet is unsafe (Score:3, Insightful)
A more interesting question is why people continue to ignore security -- could it perhaps be that security just isn't that important to anyone?
It seems that people only get upset when their bankaccount gets drained. Until then, WHATEVERRRRRR.
Re:Security company says the internet is unsafe (Score:3, Insightful)
Security is
And when I say hard, I mean 'mentally challenging'
I'm reminded of the Army study that came out & one of their conclusions was that smarter soldiers do better at pretty much everything.
You can teach the average person the basics of computer security... the troubles start when they have to apply them. God help 'em if they run into a sit
But exactly this problem is on the rise (Score:2)
A point to remember (Score:5, Informative)
For that matter, it's like the people feeding mega-doses of different things to lab rats that have been bred to be suseptable to cancer, then announcing that Yet Another Chemical Causes Cancer. You never hear about things that they couldn't manage to "prove" a carcinogen, any more than you're ever told that there's no evidence their rat experiments are relevant to humans. Sorry about the bit of a rant, there, but I do think those "researchers" need to be taken down a peg and forced to demonstrate a relationship between what they're doing and what happens in a human being.
Re:A point to remember (Score:2)
so now we'll see (Score:3, Funny)
Re:so now we'll see (Score:3, Interesting)
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 h [upspiral.com]
site blocking predicted (Score:4, Interesting)
-russ
Re:site blocking predicted (Score:5, Funny)
Fellow Slashdotters! May God(Blocked: Traditional Religions) have mercy on his soul! We have found he who has spawned the unholy beast that is Websense(Access Granted)!
Re:site blocking predicted (Score:2)
Apparently, still are. Why didn't you take your "stupid idea" and implement it? Compare your idea with "Dan's Guardian [dansguardian.org] and tell me how your product is in any way, effectively different.
In various contexts, products like Dan's Guardian are required by law. You could've made it big. Instead, you made some angry posts after the fact, it seems.
Th American way starts with the
Re:site blocking predicted (Score:2)
Obvious solution (Score:2, Funny)
I think they're over-reaching (Score:5, Insightful)
You go to a site. Ten minutes ago, the site you were on was issued a green checkmark, five minutes ago the bad guys running the site swapped out the good files for the bad, and you get an Active X popup (I said you're j6p!!). You can't trust the green checkmark. You go to a site that has a message board where some a-hole posted a link to malware, triggering a red X. They've caught it, banned him, pulled the link, and gotten the green checkmark back. But you saw the red X; and the person who's going to rip you a new one if he has to spend his weekend de-fouling your PC again told you that the red X should be a skull and crossbones and to stay the hell away from any site where you ever saw one. Now you don't know what to make of the red X.
What about a site that hasn't been scanned yet? Or whose updates have been detected but not audited? A question mark? Nothing? How long until it's just another thing the average user doesn't pay attention to? You can't have an up-to-the-millisecond read on the entire web, and you don't have any margin of error where your security mechanism is the end user knowing what to think.
Re:I think they're over-reaching (Score:2)
Five percent dangerous traffic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Five percent dangerous traffic. (Score:2)
Helping user (Score:2, Interesting)
5% of all security advisories (Score:2)
Never say web surfing is safe. (Score:2, Funny)
define "safe" (Score:5, Insightful)
In reality, for the unsuspecting user, there is hardly a site that is safe. Almost every site uses tracking cookies that violates the original security model that only an original site will acess data about the sesion. If the 12o7 cookie exists at amazon and the fly-by-night-shady-blogger, one must assume that the safety of your amazom stored credit card informaiton is compromised. The yahoo or google toolbar should be safe, but it is now suspected that the google toolbar is collecting personal web traffic, and gathering information that might be corporate sensitive. The 5% number might represent the truly malignant websites, but those are not the problem. As in nature, the truely malignant parasites will have a hard time surviving, as many will kill the host before they spread. It is the subtle parasites, the other 95%, that will continue to cause problems if we do not educate users to wash thier hands and avoid unprotected sex. In other words, do not accept all cookies and do not faoll for a horse or a rabbit, no matte how pretty it might look.
Re:If the 12o7 cookie exists at amazon and the fly (Score:2)
If the 12o7 cookie exists at amazon and the fly-by-night-shady-blogger, one must assume that the safety of your amazom stored credit card informaiton is compromised.
I don't quite understand why people rate cookies as a security risk; it is correct they are a privacy risk, but it is not like colluding web sites could not construct a different attack on your privacy.
Maybe you could explain your scenario on how the shady blogger gets the credit card number?
Re:define "safe" (Score:2)
Re:define "safe" (Score:2)
Can someone explain to me what's happening with Google, then? I google for a term XYZ, and immediately Firefox informs me that XYZ.com wishes to set a cookie. I haven't gone to their site, yet, but Google is ready to set a cookie on their behalf? Or else Google is referring my browser somehow to that site.
This is new(ish). Anyone aware of it / explain, please?
Re:define "safe" (Score:2, Informative)
---John Holmes...
Re:define "safe" (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, thank-you very much! I'd never guessed that it was in Firefox itself. It seems that Mozilla builds default to pre-fetching whatever a website tells them to, and that Google tells it to pre-fetch the top link.
Seeing as I don't like my browser silently downloading websites that I may not have visited (let alone setting cookies), I've disabled this. For anyone who is interested, enter about:config in the address bar, and set network.prefetch-next to false.
no way... (Score:3, Funny)
Fun with their analysis graphs (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/dirtyplumpers.co
Scroll to where it shows the graph of connected sites. Those sites are clickable to get their analysis, so you can iterate this process.
First I'm amazed at how many of these sites are listed as having "many users".
Second, the only reason I've seen so far for branding a site red is that if you give them your email address they will send you spam.
We can whine and piss and moan (Score:2, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
*Mothers Against Downloading Pr0n
Useful tool for me, too (Score:2, Interesting)
Way out of date (Score:4, Interesting)
SiteAdvisor isn't that accurate (Score:2, Informative)
Re:SiteAdvisor isn't that accurate (Score:2)
Since you don't mention what site you work for your comment is completly worthless - no way for anybody to evaluate what you are saying
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I've heard of those web sights. (Score:2, Funny)
Anyway you have to be careful when you surf the intrawebs now so serious. latezzz
Good idea, but pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
The fallacy starts with the question "who'll install it?". Well, who will? You will. I will. Everyone who knows about the problem will. But those who need it most won't. They don't even know that problem exists! So unless you manage to get this item into the fold of Microsoft's standard software, the tool will not make it onto the computer of those who need it worst.
But, against all odds, let's assume the tool gets to our unclued user's computer. Then he'll go to a website offering him a screensaver and the plugin will spew "WARNING!" all over the screen.
Warning?
Why?
A screensaver?
Must be an error. After all, what's dangerous about a harmless screensaver that shows me some cute and cuddly kitty pics? It's not that dreaded sex stuff that they warn me about on TV.
The whole deal is that people are just too friggin' CLUELESS to be left alone in the 'net. They're a danger to themselves and to others. Either get them off the 'net (ok, ok, I may dream... won't happen simply 'cause ISPs would run amok if they didn't have their comfortable low-bandwidth using users, not to mention the billion pages trying to sell you junk that we get (legally) for free), or educate them!
There is no technical solution for social problems!
On my wishlist... (Score:2)
Big Red X (Score:2)
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, wouldn't it be great if some OS allowed people to give their kids accounts with limited rights? You know so they couldn't screw up an entire install? I don't mean like what BSD, Linux or Mac can do.
Oh wait, yes I do.
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:3, Informative)
Oh wait, yes I do.
Yes, and how does one "kill" a computer? The worst that you can do is corrupt your OS and force a reinstall. The grandparent post sounds like blatant astroturfing for SiteAdvisor.
In fact, the whole story does.
Are they hoping to make money off of hyping "unsafe websites" like Norto
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:2)
that's the same thing... you've killed it...
Hardware isn't absolutely safe, either (Score:2, Informative)
That may have been true a long time ago, but is no longer.
How long have you been reading Slashdot? You must have missed this [slashdot.org] and this [slashdot.org]. And that's just in the recent past.
IIRC, at various times in the past, doing things like setting the wrong scan rate for flat panel displays for long enough periods have been known to cause hardware damage. The oldest such report I remember was from IBM, who d
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:2)
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:2)
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:2)
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:2)
By the way, it's way too much work to change the current user. Buy them a used iMac for $100, upgrade the RAM for another $20, and let them not worry about that stuff.
Did that to my mom and little sister. They're as happy as they ever could be.
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:2)
Why didn't you just tell them to stop using the garbage software they were using instead? I have several friends who I've switched over. None of them have complained, and none of them ever get viruses.
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:5, Informative)
Wayne_Knight (958917)
this sounds familiar...
from here [slashdot.org]:
I have a brother who is marred and has 2 kids between the ages of 12-15. Those kids killed his last computer, unwittingly installing all sorts of nonsense when they downloaded games and graphics. That was on a Win98 SP2 machine which, as hard as I tried, I simply could not secure or revive from all of the trojans and malware that had infected it.
tokengeekgrrl (105602)
I am calling astroturf on these shens.
1. Get story posted on slashdot
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
step 2? Its actually post a dupe of the story and astroturf the comments section.
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:2)
Hmmm, interesting. That does seem a very close match. I've never used my Foe option before (preferring to do battle with those that try to criticise), but I think I've just found a use for it.
Well caught.
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:2)
Re:A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still grea (Score:2)
Re:105% of all statistics you see are fake (Score:2)
Re:Job Application? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do companies do this? Simple. They believe, rightly, that a college degree is a sign that a person will put themself through hell and beaurocratic bullshit to get what (de
Re:Job Application? (Score:2)
I don't like arguing with stupid, but here goes: you could have a college degree but be irresponsible or dishonest or difficult to work with. What matters is that IQ is a better indicator of future job performance than a resume. Not a perfect indicator, but a better indicator, when measured.
Re:Job Application? (Score:2)
Hunter, J. E., and Hunter, R. F. 1984. Validity and utility of alternative predictors of job performance. Psychological Bull. 96:72-98
Your post is stupid not because of what you say about why employers find degrees useful, but because of a short phrase on which your entire argument rests: "not as meaningless as intelligence alone."
In fact, Hunter and Hunter found through the meta-analysis cited above that Cognitive test
eWeek -- "Yellow" according to SiteAdvisor (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The most dangerous and ugly site ever: (Score:2)
Re:Use a condom... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Use a condom... (Score:2)
Re:Yellow (Score:2)