Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

The Dark Side of Paid Search

Posted by Zonk on Fri May 12, 2006 02:40 PM
from the is-the-darkside-stronger-no-no-quicker-easier dept.
Security The Internet
Tough Lefty writes "A new study by McAfee's SiteAdvisor Web ratings finds that sponsored results from some of the biggest names in the search engine business contain spyware, spam, scams and other Internet menaces. The key findings were that major search engines returned risky sites in their search results for popular keywords and sponsored results contained two to four times as many dangerous sites as organic results. Overall, MSN search results had the lowest percentage (3.9%) of dangerous sites while Ask search results had the highest percentage (6.1%). Google was in between (5.3%). Check the comprehensive study for all the data."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] McAfee Anti-Virus Causes Widespread File Damage 353 comments
AJ Mexico writes, "[Friday] McAfee released an anti-virus update that contained an anomaly in the DAT file that caused many important files to be deleted from affected systems. At my company, tens of thousands of files were deleted from dozens of servers and around 2000 user machines. Affected applications included MS Office, and products from IBM (Rational), GreenHills, MS Office, Ansys, Adobe, Autocad, Hyperion, Win MPM, MS Shared, MapInfo, Macromedia, MySQL, CA, Cold Fusion, ATI, FTP Voyager, Visual Studio, PTC, ADS, FEMAP, STAT, Rational.Apparently the DAT file targeted mostly, if not exclusively, DLLs and EXE files." An anonymous reader added, "Already, the SANS Internet Storm Center received a number of notes from distressed sysadmins reporting thousands of deleted or quarantined files. McAfee in response released advice to restore the files. Users who configured McAfee to delete files are left with using backups (we all got good backups... or?) or System restore."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

The Dark Side of Paid Search 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.
  • And if the spam breaks open many years too soon (whoa-ho-ho)
    and if there is no room on my hard drive (whoa-hoa-hooooo)
    and if your head explodes with scam site search results too,
    I'll see you on the dark side of Paid Search (whooooaaaooo - hoooo whooaaaa-oh!)

  • Click on dubious links... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by winkydink (650484) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Friday May 12 2006, @02:42PM (#15320573) Homepage Journal
    ...get something you didn't bargain for.

    Really, is this even remotely news?
  • I guess all these years of automatically ignoring and scrolling past the "sponsored" results has paid off.

  • From TFA... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Foolicious (895952) on Friday May 12 2006, @02:47PM (#15320622) Homepage
    "Users can't count on search engines to protect them; to the contrary, we find that search result rankings often do not reflect site safety" Are users really depending on search engines to protect them? Even foolish users?

  • Paradox (Score:4, Interesting)

    by suv4x4 (956391) on Friday May 12 2006, @02:50PM (#15320659)
    We have a central organisation that handles domain use and the arising domain disputes.
    Why we don't have a central organisation that bans spyware/malware sites? Unlike porn, where religious and all kinds of debates open, the worst cases of malware are obvious and good for nothing.

    Wouldn't it seem odd to someone if drug dealers advertised their services in newspaper ads? Why isn't it odd they are allowed to reach audience via controlled ads on the search engines?

    We also have Yahoo/Ask/Google's ability to filter and review their own ads and remove offensive ads. They also remove them now, but kinda sloow.. kinda lazy... you know... just enough not to hurt their revenue and not be blamed by the public they're doing nothing.

    We also have Google eagerly promoting their typosquatting service for domains while saying they don't.

    It's a nice example of what greed makes good companies do.
    • Why we don't have a central organisation that bans spyware/malware sites? Unlike porn, where religious and all kinds of debates open, the worst cases of malware are obvious and good for nothing.

      Because there will always be one sucker who is poerfectly willing to give up their spare processor cycles and demographic info in exchange for a taskbar icon that tells them what temperature it is outside. It's a sad argument, but a valid one for the purveyors of crapware.

      Wouldn't it seem odd to someone if drug de

      • Because there will always be one sucker who is poerfectly willing to give up their spare processor cycles and demographic info in exchange for a taskbar icon that tells them what temperature it is outside.

        What kind of an argument is that? First if he can't access the site because it's filtered how he will install anything.

        And second, if 0.001% of a population prefers to be robbed and tortured for fun, does it mean that robbery and torture should be legal for the rest 99.999% ?
          • Which serves to illustrate the problems with EULAs currently. It's gotten absurd that these things have gotten so out of hand that you agree to not make derrogatory comments about the company or its products. I guess I violated that one with SOE multiple times.

            Isn't there something in contract law about agreements that force you to give up certain rights are not binding?
            Yet, a company can draft a ridiculous EULA and it's taken as gospel truth and the law.
            That really needs to change.

    • Re:Paradox (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DragonWriter (970822) on Friday May 12 2006, @03:40PM (#15321088)
      Wouldn't it seem odd to someone if drug dealers advertised their services in newspaper ads?
      People providing, for example, "medical" marijuana in California in violation of federal law (i.e., "drug dealers") do advertise in newspapers, particularly the free urban weeklies -- which, being free for "users" (i.e., "readers") to access, are pretty much the best dead-tree newspaper equivalent of free public search engines, as far as advertising. And let's not even get started on prostitution.
      Why isn't it odd they are allowed to reach audience via controlled ads on the search engines?
      You seem to equivocating with the use of "they" here; the article is not about drug dealers being able to reach users via paid search engine ads. Drug dealers are not the same thing as people who sites may provide the download of "dangerous" content, which is often (even if unwelcome to many users) not illegal.
      We also have Yahoo/Ask/Google's ability to filter and review their own ads and remove offensive ads.
      Offensive is subjective. People are offended by different things. You'd probably be a lot less happy if everything anyone found "offensive" was swiftly and immediately removed from every search engine. Sure, the stuff you don't like would be gone, but I'd bet you'd find much of the stuff you do like would be gone too.
      • If they paid attention to what I found offensive, everyone would have a much harder time finding information about Microsoft products...
  • Overall, MSN search results had the lowest percentage (3.9%) of dangerous sites while Ask search results had the highest percentage (6.1%). Google was in between (5.3%). Check the comprehensive study for all the data."

    Microsoft's Strider HoneyMonkey Exploit Detection System seems to be working.

    • I think that a pro-Microsoftie has taken over Zonk's account... he permitted something good to be said about Microsoft... on Slashdot!

  • hmm (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Once again, MSN proves to be the superior choice when it comes to search engine

  • It would be nice if search engines would look for known exploits, and they should autocheck the top hits on the top searches.

  • Didn't realize McAfee bought SiteAdvisor (Score:3, Interesting)

    by syphax (189065) on Friday May 12 2006, @02:59PM (#15320741) Journal

    It's hardly surprising, but I don't trust the AV companies. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but they simply have an interest in keep in us scared about viruses and such so that we buy their products.

    When SiteAdvisor was independent, I felt I could trust it (partly because they it founded by geeks). Of course, I had no idea how they planned to stay in business, but as a free service it was great. Now I have the perception, at least, that it could have an agenda beyond objective detection of spyware etc. (mainly, scaring the bejeezus out of us).

  • web 2.0 to the rescue! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bigattichouse (527527) on Friday May 12 2006, @03:04PM (#15320781) Homepage
    Ok.. so we need an "anti-digg", where you bookmark a site and tag it with negative tags... then abrowser plugin to set your browser to have a threshold of allowed "badness".. the finally a "meta filter" on google to strip out results from crap you don't want.

  • like OMG!!!!11 (Score:4, Funny)

    by GillBates0 (664202) on Friday May 12 2006, @03:07PM (#15320801) Homepage Journal
    The most dangerous keywords include "free screensavers," "bearshare," "kazaa," "download music" and "free games."

    OMG LOOK at those CUTE LI'L Puppies and Kittens on www.screensavers.com !!111 How can a website with LIKE SO MUCH Cuteness be evil ????!!!

    screensavers.com just DESERVES it's top "Sponsored Link" spot in Google's results!!1

    kthxbye!!

  • It would rock if some search engine decided to not index content that had ActiveX controls on it. Or sites that SiteAdvisor (or some other heuristic) indicates is unsafe. It would cut the revenue stream from these sites fairly quickly. I would probably pay for such a service if it meant that it cut revenue from these jerks.

    Not that any of this is any excuse for the foolish security flaws (IE,running as admin) and naive user actions (installing anything, ignoring EULAs, etc.).

  • Viability of the Ad Based Model (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Goblez (928516) on Friday May 12 2006, @03:22PM (#15320895)

    Having been exposed to the Internet at a young age (for both it and myself), I've learned over the years never to touch Ads. Whether benign looking links in my Gmail to the annoying flash ads, there is no way I'm touching them. If I need a product, I find the manufacturer or vendor's website and do what I need to there.

    So I pose the question, how long will the ad based revenue system remain relevant once your common internetite learns this lesson?

    • So I pose the question, how long will the ad based revenue system remain relevant once your common internetite learns this lesson?
      About as long as advertising-based revenue systems in TV, dead-tree media, and elsewher will remain relevant.

  • Why Isn't Google Leading In This Area? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nom du Keyboard (633989) on Friday May 12 2006, @03:24PM (#15320925)
    Why isn't Google performing a value added function here of flagging all sites they've spidered for the following malware before presenting them as search results:

    1: Virus
    2: Attempted AdWare installs
    3: Attempted Spyware installs
    4: ActiveX controls
    5: Java required
    6: Anything else that it attempts to install when you visit
    7: Sites that disable, or attempt to, your browser features like Right Click.
    8: Sites that are only redirection sites.

    and most of all
    are you ready?

    9: Sites that make themselves anywhere from hard to impossible to exit from afterwards without, at minimum, killing your browser process.

    Flagging questionable, along with outright bad, sites would protect users, while likely reducing their traffic - which is what they deserve to have happen to them. More than twice I've used the Google cache to read a site's static content rather than risk visiting them directly.

    And while they're at it, add an easily clickable link to tell Google that this site appears gone, or substantially changed from the search result summary and ought to be re-spidered ASAP would be nice too. Enlist your users in identifying bad search results.

    Someone who does all this would have a strong hold on my search business.

  • Duh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DragonWriter (970822) on Friday May 12 2006, @03:32PM (#15321008)
    From TFA:
    The most dangerous keywords include "free screensavers," "bearshare," "kazaa," "download music" and "free games."
    Er, so the results on searches specifically for products that include spyware are particularly likely to include spyware. Well, duh.
    Users can't count on search engines to protect them; to the contrary, we find that search result rankings often do not reflect site safety.
    Again, duh. The purpose of search ranking (particularly outside of sponsored results) is rather overtly to reflect relevance. Since relevance is pretty much orthogonal to (in cases where the search is for "kazaa" or "bearshare", perhaps opposed to) safety, it should come as no surprise that search rankings don't have any particularly consistent relation to safety. Expecting that it would is like expecting that you can use the price of a vehicle as a proxy for its gas mileage.

  • click here (Score:4, Interesting)

    by esmrg (869061) on Friday May 12 2006, @03:59PM (#15321246)
    sponsored results
    OK, it can cost a bit of money to get placed in sponsored results. So where does this money come from, when the sites paying for this high visibilty purportedly offer content for free?

    We all knew the answer to that, before this article.

    So how financially naive do you have be to click on a sponsored link with 'free' in the description - and not assume there is a hidden string attached?

    That is like giving a $20 bill to the guy selling gum on the street in mexico and expecting change. In fact, I knew someone who did something similar to that in thailand. He didn't understand the language or the currency system, so he gave the peddler on the street his entire wad of bills and asked him to take what he owed him. The peddler took the money and ran off. That was his entire budget for the trip.

    If clicking sponsored links is commonplace on the internet, common sense has degenerated to moronic levels.

    -- "Common sense is for common people." - Dr. Piche

  • Freeways Cause Automotive Crime (Score:3, Funny)

    by Carcass666 (539381) on Friday May 12 2006, @07:25PM (#15322645)

    Representatives from the automotive insurance industry released a self-authored report yesterday that confirmed most freeways lead people through areas that are heavy in traffic, subject to increased probability of colissions and even vandalism and crime.

    "I was shocked that people would create a place to drive my car without making sure there was no possiblity of me or my vehicle getting injured," stated a randomly selected driver.

    Auto insurance representatives questioned for the story said the frightening study proves that their product (which provides no guaranteed protection against auto collisions) is absolutely essential to safe driving. When asked why they spend millions of dollars to make sure they are not held liable in all but the most obvious of cases, insurance representatives had not comment, but reminded everybody how dangerous freeways are, and suggested that people should hold the state liable for offering such questional places for people to drive their cars in the first place.

    • As a libertarian, you shouldn't care if someone's selling rat poison as viagra.

      The market will sort it all out - the seller will eventual lose sales as his reputations goes downhill. The invisible hand and all that!

      • Re:That's good. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by suv4x4 (956391) on Friday May 12 2006, @02:56PM (#15320720)
        As a libertarian, you shouldn't care if someone's selling rat poison as viagra.

        Yea, who needs a centralized protection. It's all natural. See AIDS for example. It's not as if having no immune system affects your life or anything.

      • At risk of naively responding to someone who posted something in order to make a point, libertarianism is a philosophy based on the principle that individuals should be allowed complete freedom of action as long as they do not infringe on the same freedom of others. I'm not a libertarian, but I'm guessing they'd lump poisoning (whether the victim is limp-penised or not) under the whole freedom of others thingee.

        That said, the interesting part of the discussion (besides connecting the dots in order to eq

      • As a libertarian, you shouldn't care if someone's selling rat poison as viagra.

        The market will sort it all out - the seller will eventual lose sales as his reputations goes downhill. The invisible hand and all that!
        I don't think that you understand libertarianism. Selling rat poison as viagra is breach of the agreement between the seller and the buyer. As such the buyer or buyers heirs can instigate legal proceedings against the seller.

    • Re:That's good. (Score:5, Informative)

      by emurphy42 (631808) on Friday May 12 2006, @03:15PM (#15320854) Homepage
      people who sell firefox,

      That [downloadfirefox.net] appears to be an innocuous "download Firefox with Google Toolbar" site. Perhaps you meant the typosquatter [downloadfirefox.com] parked next door?

      and rebadge Audacity as their own

      That [luxuriousity.com] seems to be dead. Ironically, it has a typosquatter [luxuriosity.com] parked next door as well.

        • Dude, you were logged in when you responded. I've a gun, and as a libertarian, I believe I have the right to come sneak and shoot you in the back because you are obviously a menace to Society.

          I already have eyes on my back though.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.