Daily Domainer

Many Internet users are concerned about the safety (or lack thereof) of content they encounter as they surf the Net. Top risks include getting looped in to scams, unauthorized downloads showing up on computers, receiving massive amounts of spam after registering at a website, and those all too infamous wayward links that take you to the Net’s naughty regions rather than the link you thought you were going to view.

While these problems occur around the world, Internet security company McAfee has found that some types of domains are riskier than others. Problems occur on .info, .com, and most country domains that are currently available. Restricted availability means that .edu domains are fairly safe while the only virtually risk-free top level domain (TLD) is .gov, which is used strictly by the US government.

At the forefront of the effort to document the "malicious web" is Internet security company McAfee with its product SiteAdvisor, a gargantuan database of the world’s most popular and highly trafficked websites… 8.1 million or so, all of which are analyzed using a stringent testing process.

Some of the things SiteAdvisor tests for include

• excessive pop-ups while surfing the site,
• the spam quotient site visitors receive if they sign up on forms within the site, and
• hyperlink validity (i.e. does the link go where it’s supposed to go).

SiteAdvisor also reviews the downloadable content on websites to see if viruses are attached and to determine if non-requested software such as spyware is downloaded with the content.

If a website fails any of the tests the site is red-flagged; sites that pass but that are suspect are tagged yellow to signify that caution should be used with visiting that particular website.

4.1% of all sites tested by SiteAdvisor are rated red or yellow (actually, it's pink in the map shown below). But the incidence of red and yellow sites varies dramatically across top-level domains, ranging from a low of 0.1% for Finland (.fi) to a high of 10.1% for the tiny island of Tokelau (.tk).

• The most risky large countries are Romania (.ro, 5.6% risky sites) and Russia (.ru, 4.5% risky sites). These country TLDs are also the most likely to host exploit sites.
• .info is the riskiest generic TLD, with 7.5% of its sites rated as risky. .com is the second most risky generic TLD, with 5.5% of sites rated as risky.
• Four of the five least risky country TLDs are Nordic countries – Finland (0.10%), Norway (.no, 0.16%), Sweden (.se, 0.21%) and Iceland (.is, 0.19%). Ireland (.ie, 0.11%) rounds out the top five least risky country TLDs.
• .gov is the only frequently tested TLD for which SiteAdvisor has found no risky sites. .gov is only available to United States government agencies.
• Even though the .com TLD is only the 5th most risky TLD by rank, its huge popularity magnifies its impact on search and browsing risk dramatically. 86.6% of clicks to red and yellow rated sites go to .com sites.
• Even though the Netherlands (.nl), Germany (.de) and the United Kingdom (.uk) are all relatively safe TLDs, ranking 31st, 33rd and 51st most risky, each of their TLDs account for more than 2 million clicks to red and yellow sites every month. Likewise Japan (.jp) is ranked 57th most risky and yet red and yellow rated .jp sites receive an estimated 1.6 million clicks each month.

More stats and charts are available here.

The SiteAdvisor service is proving to be a help to those who use it, but it doesn’t provide 100% protection. SiteAdvisor's database is steadily growing but so is the number of domain names being registered. Plus, there’s talk of adding new TLDs (Heard of .xxx? You might soon.) Then when you add in the fact that SiteAdvisor is currently only capable of reading websites in 13 different languages… well it just reminds you that you still have be careful while web surfing.

Additionally, for the service to function, the software must report all the websites you visit or read about in emails or IMs to the central SiteAdvisor database for verification. SiteAdvisor assures us in their privacy policy that they do not link this data to your identity or IP address.

Some protection is better than none and if you are interested, you can download the software for free here. SiteAdvisor is compatible with Internet Explorer as well as FireFox.