Any given time, I suppose many people could come up with a list of questionable "domains," ones you should probably have some concern about when surfing to them. Particularly country domains, such as .uk, .us, and so on. In a study released Wednesday by security firm McAfee, they gave us their own view of the most dangerous domains to surf to.

According to the report, 19.2% of all Web sites ending in the .hk domain pose a security threat to Web users. Meanwhile China (.cn) is second at over 11%. The most popular domain, .com ranks at #11 overall.

How did McAfee get this data? Using their SiteAdvisor technology, of course. The study compared the ratings of sites found in each of the 265 country and generic domains (such as .com) and ranked them by the number of risky Web sites found in each domain. Risky sites, according to the report, were ones that contained "adware, spyware, viruses, spam, excessive pop-ups, browser exploits or links to other red-rated sites."

In terms of safety, Finland (.fi) replaced Ireland (.is) as the safest online destination with 0.05%, followed by Japan (.jp).

Other key findings from McAfee "Mapping the Mal Web Revisited" report 2008 include:

* The chance of downloading spyware, adware, viruses or other unwanted software from surfing the Web increased 41.5% over 2007
* Sites which offer downloads such as ringtones and screen savers that are also loaded with viruses, spyware and adware increased over the last year from 3.3% to 4.7%
* The Philippines (.ph) experienced a 270% increase in overall riskiness
* Tokelau (.tk) and Samoa (.ws) were notably safer in 2008 dropping to 28th and 12th
* In Europe, Spain (.es) experienced a 91% increase in overall risk

What does all this mean? Well, obviously, for McAfee it means, you consumers need to buy our security products and use our SiteAdvisor tech (free). For consumers it means, make sure you have some sort of up-to-date virus scanner on your system, don't accept unwanted pop-up offers on sites you go to, and "be careful out there."

The full report can be downloaded from McAfee's site ... when they get around to posting it, that is.

Source: By Tech Ex http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/