Searching for free stuff online can be costly

[ronjor]

by Elinor Mills

It's common knowledge that you can catch computer viruses on porn Web sites. But did you know it's also risky to surf the Web searching for free movies or music?

A study from McAfee to be released on Tuesday finds that adding the word "free" when looking for entertainment content in search engines greatly increases the chances of landing on a site hosting malware.

Article

[chronomatic]

Porn and warez sites are not the only sites that host malware. Many "legitimate" mainstream sites have been caught hosting malware inadvertently. There is no place immune from malware anymore, so the old adage of "I surf only trusted sites" is, well, outdated.

[dw426]

Who's to bet the MPAA and RIAA had a hand in this "study"? I smell a campaign more than a study here.

[Searching_ _ _]

Back in the days when Castlecops was still around, a couple of relatives used to have competitions about the free stuff they could find.
One of them told me he was having problems with his computer, so I made up a disc of programs from Castlecops plus one of my paid for anti's.

His computer was so infected I stopped the system at 4700 malicious items because the computer was getting too sluggish. Deleted what it found and rebooted then rescanned to find another 2200 malicious items.

I learned my lesson then about Googling for the word "Free". I guess it is still as bad as it was then.

[m00nbl00d]

Originally Posted by Searching_ _ _

Back in the days when Castlecops was still around, a couple of relatives used to have competitions about the free stuff they could find.
One of them told me he was having problems with his computer, so I made up a disc of programs from Castlecops plus one of my paid for anti's.

His computer was so infected I stopped the system at 4700 malicious items because the computer was getting too sluggish. Deleted what it found and rebooted then rescanned to find another 2200 malicious items.

I learned my lesson then about Googling for the word "Free". I guess it is still as bad as it was then.

You can look for "Paid" and still have the same sort of problems. I don't truly see what "Free" has to do with anything.
The problem is not "Free" nor "Paid"; it's rather what people download, which actually means they got no idea what the heck they're downloading. If it's free or paid is of no real importance.

[chronomatic]

Originally Posted by m00nbl00d

You can look for "Paid" and still have the same sort of problems. I don't truly see what "Free" has to do with anything.
The problem is not "Free" nor "Paid"; it's rather what people download, which actually means they got no idea what the heck they're downloading. If it's free or paid is of no real importance.

I agree. But you don't even have to intentionally download anything. Merely visiting MSNBC or Fox News or CNN or CNET or any such mainstream site which serves up third party ads can make a Windows computer become infected. It's happened before and I have seen people complain about it on these very forums.

So, this is a FUD piece meant to scare people into not looking for free stuff. There are millions of Windows users who never torrent or visit warez sites who become infected. Merely surfing only to "trusted" sites doesn't solve the problem.

[Beto]

Search for FREE STUFF only on a test partition with a sandbox. Period!!!

Otherwise you will most likely get infected.