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5% of All Web Traffic Unsafe

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the conservative-estimates dept.

OnFour writes "The MIT-backed startup behind SiteAdvisor has slapped a red "X" warning label on approximately 5 percent of all Web traffic and warned that there are roughly one billion monthly visits to Web pages that aren't safe for surfing. About 2 percent of all Web traffic was given the "yellow" caution rating." A more general SiteAdvisor blog entry overview was covered earlier on Slashdot.

2 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. A tad misleading, but SiteAdvisor is still great by Wayne_Knight · · Score: 0, Redundant

    To say "5% of All Web Traffic [is] Unsafe" would make the assumption that out of 100 bytes transmitted, 5 were from dangerous sites. The correct way to specify what SiteAdvisor claims would be "5% of All Web Requests From Unsafe Sites".

    But this isn't to say that SiteAdvisor isn't bad. Heck, it's the best thing to happen since sliced bread, or just bread. I have a brother who is marred and has 2 kids between the ages of 12 and 15. Those kids killed his last computer, unwittingly installing all sorts of nonsense when they downloaded games and graphics. That was on a Windows 98 machine which, as hard as I tried, simply could not secure or revive from all of the trojan horses and malware that had infected it.

    I've just emailed him about installing the SiteAdvisor plug-in for Firefox which is absolutely brilliant for users like my brother. Hell, I've installed it just for the novelty of it. The "Red X/Green Check" thing really turns novices more skeptical.

  2. What I do... by Antony-Kyre · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I didn't know it was as high as 5%, but that's one reason why I disable a lot of scripting by default and enable on a per site basis.