Survey: Higher Risk Associated With Certain Website Domains

The Associated Press Technology said that a recent report, by antivirus software vendor McAfee Inc., found the most dangerous website domains to navigate. The top picks are “.hk” or Hong Kong, “.cn” or China and “.info” or information.

Of all “.hk” sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 % as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8% of “.cn” sites and 11.7% of “.info” sites. According to the report, a little more than 5% of the sites under the “.com” domain, the world’s most popular, were identified as dangerous.

More spammers, malicious code writers and other cybercriminals, can easily establish an online presence when domain name registry businesses cut requirements for registering a site in order to boost their profit and profile. The report however, doesn’t identify domain name registration companies that are responsible.

What McAfee’s report, now in its second year, tries to do is identify the domains that are populated with the highest concentration of risky sites. The servers for “.hk” and “.cn” websites also don’t have to be in China; website operators can register sites from anywhere to target different groups. Other risky domains include “.ro” or Romania, with 6.8%, and “.ru” or Russia, with 6% of sites flagged as dangerous.

The McAfee report is based on results from 9.9 million websites that were tested in 265 domains for serving malicious code, excessive pop-up ads or forms to fill out that actually are tools for harvesting e-mail addresses for sending spam.

Some of the least-risky domain names found in the survey are “.gov” for government use (let’s hope so), with 0.05% flagged; “.jp” or Japan, with 0.1% flagged and “.au” or Australia, 0.3% flagged.