Last week, a study by Fraser Howard, one of the main researchers at Sophos Labs (a computer security software and hardware company) suggested that you are twice more likely to click on a poisoned link at Bing.com than you are at Google.com. A poisoned link is a link that takes you to an infected website that will automatically download a virus to your computer.
Sophos Labs reports that of the poisoned searches they encountered, 65% of them were from Bing.com and 30% from Google.com. Sophos does add that the result of their study is based on collecting only two weeks of data. Regardless of how long the study was or if you use Microsoft’s Bing.com search engine or Google.com, I still think it is a good idea not to blindly search\click on websites.
The link below will take you to a post I wrote almost two years ago about Web of Trust (WOT). Web of Trust lets you know the status (reputation) of a site BEFORE you click on it. WOT is a free browser add-on that works very well.
https://technologyjones.com/2011/01/19/know-before-you-click-web-of-trust-2/
Be informed and be safe,
John L. Jones
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