Screensavers - Not password savers!

Wanted that Screensave with that bikin clad blonde or of that Red Ferrari you may never get to own? Well whats the easiest thing to do? Go to google and type in the words Screensaver and Voila! there it is.

However, be advised that more than half of the links that Google returns take you to Web sites loaded with either spyware or adware. That means you may stand the chance of your personal data being compromised or have your email bombarded with spam. In a study recently conducted study by McAfee and anti-spyware activist Ben Edelman, it was established that most of the sponsored sites that the reputed search engines send you to contain a lot of spyware. AOL, Ask.com, Google, MSN, and Yahoo all figure in that list of reputed search engines without exceptions.
In a comparitive study, it has emerged that MSN search results had the lowest percentage of dangerous sites (3.9 percent) while Ask search results had the highest percentage (6.1 percent). Google and Yahoo and AOL figured somewhere i between.

Solution:

McAfee has on its web site a tol called the Site Advisor for tackling the problems. It has been found to do a great job of protecting you from the Web's dark side. This tool is free! Mc Afee also has a plug in called the site advisor which places a small box in the corner of the web browser that turns green for safe sites and red for the unsafe ones. SiteAdvisor ratings are based on threats that include software downloads loaded with adware or spyware, malicious code embedded in Web pages, phishing attempts and scams, and the amount of spam that a registered user gets.
With Google and MSN and Yahoo, it also puts a rating icon next to the the individual search results. This makes it so much safer and one would not make the mistake of clicking onthe link that is unsafe.

With tools such as Site Advisor, it may be easier now to not click on that wrong site. But Site Advisor too is not perfect. The best solution would therefore be not to download any screensavers.