Ireland has the second least risky country domain name (.ie), according to a new report by McAfee. The report found that internet users make more than 550 million clicks to risky websites a month. The McAfee SiteAdvisor research report, entitled Mapping the Mal Web, ranked 265 top-level domains based on McAfee’s web safety tests for spyware, spam, exploits and scams. It revealed large differences in safety from one domain to another.Overall, 4.1pc of all sites tested by SiteAdvisor were deemed to have a level of risk.The most risky large country domains are Romania (.ro), with 5.6pc of sites using this domain name found to be risky, and Russia (.ru), with 4.5pc risky sites. These country domains are also the most likely to host exploit or ‘drive-by-download’ sites, the report said. Of generic domain names, .info is the riskiest, with 7.5pc of its sites rated risky; .com is the second most risky generic domain, with 5.5pc of sites rated risky. McAfee based the report on its extensive site database of 8.1 million of the most trafficked websites, representing more than 95pc of the trafficked web.It used its SiteAdvisor tool to add intuitive red, yellow or green ratings to sites and search results based on proprietary tests of the sites. Red ratings are given to risky sites that fail one or more of McAfee's tests for adware, spyware, viruses, exploits, spam email, excessive pop-ups or strong affiliations with other red-rated sites. Green-rated sites passed each of these tests. Yellow ratings are given to sites which pass McAfee's safety tests but which still have nuisances, such as excessive pop-ups, warranting a user advisory. Even though the .com domain is only the 5th most risky domain by
rank, its huge popularity magnifies its impact on search and browsing risk dramatically. Some 86.6pc of clicks to red and yellow rated sites go to .com sites. Similarly, for relatively safe country domains by rank such as the Netherlands (.nl), Germany (.de) and the United Kingdom (.uk), which rank 31st, 33rd and 51st most risky respectively, each of their country domains account for more than two million clicks to red and yellow sites each month. Japan (.jp) is ranked 57th most risky but red- and yellow-rated .jp sites receive 1.6 million clicks each month. The least risky country domains are Finland (.fi, 0.10pc), Ireland (.ie, 0.11pc) Norway (.no, 0.16pc), Iceland (.is, 0.19pc) and Sweden (.se, 0.21pc).

Via SiliconRepublic