Slashdot Mirror
The Dark Side of Paid Search
Tough Lefty writes "A new study by McAfee's SiteAdvisor Web ratings finds that sponsored results from some of the biggest names in the search engine business contain spyware, spam, scams and other Internet menaces. The key findings were that major search engines returned risky sites in their search results for popular keywords and sponsored results contained two to four times as many dangerous sites as organic results. Overall, MSN search results had the lowest percentage (3.9%) of dangerous sites while Ask search results had the highest percentage (6.1%). Google was in between (5.3%). Check the comprehensive study for all the data."
And if the spam breaks open many years too soon (whoa-ho-ho)
and if there is no room on my hard drive (whoa-hoa-hooooo)
and if your head explodes with scam site search results too,
I'll see you on the dark side of Paid Search (whooooaaaooo - hoooo whooaaaa-oh!)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
...get something you didn't bargain for.
Really, is this even remotely news?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
As a libertarian I think any sponsored link is acceptable. If the link goes to somewhere deceitful, the consumer should be smart enough to see it as it is. I have absolutely no problem with people who sell firefox, offer OpenOffice with a sketchy deal, and rebadge Audacity as their own.
I guess all these years of automatically ignoring and scrolling past the "sponsored" results has paid off.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
"Users can't count on search engines to protect them; to the contrary, we find that search result rankings often do not reflect site safety" Are users really depending on search engines to protect them? Even foolish users?
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
We have a central organisation that handles domain use and the arising domain disputes.
Why we don't have a central organisation that bans spyware/malware sites? Unlike porn, where religious and all kinds of debates open, the worst cases of malware are obvious and good for nothing.
Wouldn't it seem odd to someone if drug dealers advertised their services in newspaper ads? Why isn't it odd they are allowed to reach audience via controlled ads on the search engines?
We also have Yahoo/Ask/Google's ability to filter and review their own ads and remove offensive ads. They also remove them now, but kinda sloow.. kinda lazy... you know... just enough not to hurt their revenue and not be blamed by the public they're doing nothing.
We also have Google eagerly promoting their typosquatting service for domains while saying they don't.
It's a nice example of what greed makes good companies do.
Microsoft's Strider HoneyMonkey Exploit Detection System seems to be working.
The 'obvious' tag bit me on the face when I read this.
nothing
I'll see you on the dark side of Paid Search
There is no dark side of the Paid Search really... matter of fact it's all dark.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Once again, MSN proves to be the superior choice when it comes to search engine
It would be nice if search engines would look for known exploits, and they should autocheck the top hits on the top searches.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's hardly surprising, but I don't trust the AV companies. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but they simply have an interest in keep in us scared about viruses and such so that we buy their products.
When SiteAdvisor was independent, I felt I could trust it (partly because they it founded by geeks). Of course, I had no idea how they planned to stay in business, but as a free service it was great. Now I have the perception, at least, that it could have an agenda beyond objective detection of spyware etc. (mainly, scaring the bejeezus out of us).
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Ok.. so we need an "anti-digg", where you bookmark a site and tag it with negative tags... then abrowser plugin to set your browser to have a threshold of allowed "badness".. the finally a "meta filter" on google to strip out results from crap you don't want.
meh
OMG LOOK at those CUTE LI'L Puppies and Kittens on www.screensavers.com !!111 How can a website with LIKE SO MUCH Cuteness be evil ????!!!
screensavers.com just DESERVES it's top "Sponsored Link" spot in Google's results!!1
kthxbye!!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
It would rock if some search engine decided to not index content that had ActiveX controls on it. Or sites that SiteAdvisor (or some other heuristic) indicates is unsafe. It would cut the revenue stream from these sites fairly quickly. I would probably pay for such a service if it meant that it cut revenue from these jerks.
Not that any of this is any excuse for the foolish security flaws (IE,running as admin) and naive user actions (installing anything, ignoring EULAs, etc.).
Having been exposed to the Internet at a young age (for both it and myself), I've learned over the years never to touch Ads. Whether benign looking links in my Gmail to the annoying flash ads, there is no way I'm touching them. If I need a product, I find the manufacturer or vendor's website and do what I need to there.
So I pose the question, how long will the ad based revenue system remain relevant once your common internetite learns this lesson?
- Kal`Goblez
1: Virus
2: Attempted AdWare installs
3: Attempted Spyware installs
4: ActiveX controls
5: Java required
6: Anything else that it attempts to install when you visit
7: Sites that disable, or attempt to, your browser features like Right Click.
8: Sites that are only redirection sites.
and most of all
are you ready?
9: Sites that make themselves anywhere from hard to impossible to exit from afterwards without, at minimum, killing your browser process.
Flagging questionable, along with outright bad, sites would protect users, while likely reducing their traffic - which is what they deserve to have happen to them. More than twice I've used the Google cache to read a site's static content rather than risk visiting them directly.
And while they're at it, add an easily clickable link to tell Google that this site appears gone, or substantially changed from the search result summary and ought to be re-spidered ASAP would be nice too. Enlist your users in identifying bad search results.
Someone who does all this would have a strong hold on my search business.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Shite
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Amazon.co.uk/books
I become a milli0naire in just one wEek! You too can jo1n my elite circle off close personel frieNds by folowign my "Guranteeed for Success" pamplet. Clik h3re for more detai1s.
for the trustworthiness of each result?
If you like ask.com, but are worried about their results, you could use http://www.trustwatch.com/. They present ask.com results with a ranking system for each hit.
I'm not sure if anyone else is doing this kind of thing for the other search engines.
I think they restrict sales of live animals on EBay. Now if you sold stuffed pussy...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Scammers and spammers make an incredible amount of money, and a lot use internet users seem to think that a willingness to pay for advertising equals credibility because so few people fall for it! But in actuality, 3-7% of phishes are successful. And the info garnered from spyware is worth a great deal more than the cost of advertsising.
It's a girl!
Has a Mcaffee sponsored "comprehensive survey" ever yelded non-fear mongering results?
Have they ever come out and said: "This problem we're investigating... turns out not to be so bad after all, nothing to be alarmed about".
They have a serious conflict of interest. They are worse than investment banks publishing research on companies they own shares in.
An apt comparison may be to pharmaceuticals publishing forecasts for the spread of diseases for which they hold the patents for the cure.
Until I'll see independent research on this, I won't be swayed.
I was backseat surfing with a friend the other day and we're on google searching for whatever, when he clicked on the sponsored link. I quickly slapped him with a trout. ;-)
I think most people must click on those things.
This is the same guy who pays me $100 to fix his PC each time it gets fooked. Hehe. I should have him clicking on this links all the time.
"No one will really be free until nerd persecution ends."
sponsored results
OK, it can cost a bit of money to get placed in sponsored results. So where does this money come from, when the sites paying for this high visibilty purportedly offer content for free?
We all knew the answer to that, before this article.
So how financially naive do you have be to click on a sponsored link with 'free' in the description - and not assume there is a hidden string attached?
That is like giving a $20 bill to the guy selling gum on the street in mexico and expecting change. In fact, I knew someone who did something similar to that in thailand. He didn't understand the language or the currency system, so he gave the peddler on the street his entire wad of bills and asked him to take what he owed him. The peddler took the money and ran off. That was his entire budget for the trip.
If clicking sponsored links is commonplace on the internet, common sense has degenerated to moronic levels.
-- "Common sense is for common people." - Dr. Piche
It is not the search engines responsibility to filter websites having spyware/adware, but your browser's responsibility to not let it function.
> You'd probably be a lot less happy if everything anyone found "offensive" was swiftly and immediately removed from every search engine. Sure, the stuff you don't like would be gone, but I'd bet you'd find much of the stuff you do like would be gone too.
There would be one website left, and it would say "Bring back all the porn!"
It's all about the money. Google gets this money. It's 5% or so of their profits. How can you expect them to be a good company? Oh, that whole be nice and crap and "do no evil"(tm) mumbo jumbo. It's do no evil, unless it affects your profits.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
But no! You have only compounded your own ignorance. Because you have not paid attention to all the sponsored advertising links in your search results, you weren't aware that these links have a "dark side." Who knows what you might have blindly stumbled into, unaware as you were of the problem?
Breakfast served all day!
really ? I should dump all google stock.
Now, is it because no one bothers to pay MSN to place their dangerous site in the search? Or is it because MSN filters better?
>>> "Are users really depending on search engines to protect them? Even foolish users?"
No but some people don't expect Google to sell them down the river for a few bucks to some spammer/scammer. Can't anyone with money uphold there morals?
Representatives from the automotive insurance industry released a self-authored report yesterday that confirmed most freeways lead people through areas that are heavy in traffic, subject to increased probability of colissions and even vandalism and crime.
Auto insurance representatives questioned for the story said the frightening study proves that their product (which provides no guaranteed protection against auto collisions) is absolutely essential to safe driving. When asked why they spend millions of dollars to make sure they are not held liable in all but the most obvious of cases, insurance representatives had not comment, but reminded everybody how dangerous freeways are, and suggested that people should hold the state liable for offering such questional places for people to drive their cars in the first place.
it's been discovered that predators prefer to hang out near watering holes, where all the zebra go.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
OK, just for a test - set your cookie restrictions to prompt for everything - type "true" into Google search, and you will prompted to allow true.com, the online dating service, to put a cookie on your system.
Sleaazy!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Actually, if you are looking to actually buy something, the sponsored links can be very usefull. For example, I just need to write "contact lenses" to google and chose from the plethora of sponsored results if I want to buy new lenses.
Okay, so some of the ads go to businesses that exist for the purpose of doing harm. I wonder how that compares to the Yellow Pages and Newspsper advertising? How many of their advertisers are not legitimate? How many of their advertisers will give you something you don't want? Is this problem really unique to search engines?
That has got to be the most oft-misquoted phrase ever. It's amazing how many people get it wrong.
The actual proverb (from the Bible, 1 Timothy 6:10)is:
"The LOVE of money is the root of all evil."
There is no inherent evil in money.
I think it's insulting to say that google should bare any responsibility for carrying malware links in their paid advertising. It is the end user's responsibility to make sure they're not downloading crap. It would be incredibly unrealistic for any search engine to try to block this stuff from their advertising systems, besides it's not in their best interest to. Add that to the fact that judging what is malware and what is not is often subjective, this article is meaningless.
or else!