Sponsored Search Results Often Malicious

McAfee Inc released a report titled "The Safety of Internet Search Engines Report," showing that sponsored search results (i.e., PPC ads) are up to four times more likely to lead to phishing sites, or sites that attempt to install spyware.

The security company studied the results of over a thousand popular keywords on major search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask. It estimates that in the United States 285 million clicks lead to "hostile sites" every month. The report makes a point to highlight that sponsored search, rather than being safer because there is a vetting and approval process, is actually much worse than the natural results. Fully 8.5% of sponsored links were determined to be dangerous, versus 3.1% of organic search results.

"We are troubled by the untrustworthiness of search engines' ads. Search engines sells ads to sites that send users literally hundreds of e-mails per week...and sites that infect users' computers with adware programs," according to a statement in the report.

Updated: Read McAfee's report The Safety of Internet Search Engines

Posted by Melanie Phung