Major Internet search engines often direct users to sites that can put them at risk of spyware and other malicious software, a study released last Friday by a tech security firm said.

The report by McAfee Inc suggested that the five major search engines did little to protect Web users from going to risky sites, and in fact directed US users to potentially harmful sites 285 million times a month.

The risk of hitting a dangerous site soared to as much as 72 per cent in results for certain popular keywords such as "free screensavers," "digital music," "popular software," and "singers," according to the report.

The study also found that "sponsored" results those paid for by advertisers are more dangerous than non-sponsored results. On average, 8.5 per cent of sponsored links were found to be dangerous versus 3.1 per cent of non-sponsored links, McAfee said.

"Search engines clearly play a critical role in Internet use: As a convenient starting point for online browsing, they're estimated to account for about half of all site visits," said Chris Dixon, who heads the McAfee SiteAdvisor product team.

"But economically motivated purveyors of spam, adware and other online problems quickly follow where consumers go online, in this case directly to search engine results. Today, based on browsing trends, we estimate that US Internet users make 285 million clicks to hostile sites every month through search queries."

The investigation, described as the first comprehensive study of online search safety, looked at the five major search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask.com between January and April.

"Search engines are too important to become just another online activity dominated by the worst elements on the Internet," study author Ben Edelman said.

"Users need and deserve a way to search safely, and the security community can help."

Source: China Daily