East European domain names pose most risks to users

People who surf on sites with Romanian and Russian domain names are more likely to fall victim to scammers than those who access websites from Japan and Australia, a report has found.

The ' SiteAdvisor research report ', created by McAfee, tested 265 top level domain names around the world. It looked at the level of dangers each site possessed in terms of adware, spyware, viruses, exploits, spam e-mail and excessive pop-ups.

Within this it found that registering at a site or downloading a file was more risky when done at certain country and generic domains.

Both Romanian (.ro) and Russian (.ru) sites were said to be the riskiest, with McAfee warning that around five per cent of Romanian and Russian sites were often used to silently exploit security holes in web browsers and install malicious programs.

One in 10 sites ending in .tk - the domain for the tiny island of Tokelau - also either spread malicious software or warranted a warning because of pop-ups or other nuisances, McAfee found.

This was a in contrast to domain sites in countries such as Japan (.jp), Australia (.au) Finland (.fi), Ireland (.ie) and Norway (.no), which all posed less than one per cent of risky sites.

Of the generic domain names .info and .com were found to be the riskiest - 7.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent respectively were listed as containing malicious software such as viruses or spyware. However .gov and .edu were deemed the safest, with .gov posing no risky sites and .edu with only 0.3 percent of sites.

This, McAfee said, was because those applying for .gov and .edu domains had to provide credentials before being granted such names. As a result they were significantly less likely to engage in risky or unethical web practices.

The research follows the launch of the company’s free global road map, SiteAdvisor. The map gives people a list of the riskiest and the safest places to surf and search on the web and advises of the dangers through colour coded flags on an interactive map.

Red is given to a site that delivers all malicious software, yellow for a site that inundate users with pop-ups and green for sites considered safe.