Study: 4 Pct of Search Results Risky

By ANICK JESDANUN

NEW YORK – It’s slightly safer to use search engines, but about 4 percent of search results still lead to sites deemed risky, a new study finds.

Ben Edelman, a security expert who serves as an adviser to security software vendor McAfee Inc., said that although the overall riskiness of search engines declined 12 percent since May, some 4.4 percent of results still lead to sites flagged with a "red" warning or a cautionary "yellow" by McAfee’s SiteAdvisor service.

SiteAdvisor rates sites based on whether they result in spyware, viruses, excessive pop-up ads, junk e-mail or other threats. The study was conducted by running about 2,500 popular keywords through the top five search engines – Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and IAC/InterActive Corp.’s Ask.

Risks are about three times greater when clicking on keyword ads that make up much of these companies’ revenues, and adult-related search terms are twice as risky as non-adult terms, the study found. Queries containing the word "free" are also more likely to produce risky sites.

Getting malicious software isn’t the only threat from search engines.

Security experts say that some hackers have used search engines to find sites with security vulnerabilities to exploit. Others have used cleverly crafted keywords to locate confidential documents and passwords inadvertently left on public Web sites.

Search companies, meanwhile, have taken steps to mitigate the risks. Google, for instance, sometimes flags links to sites it deems risky.