Online job searchers beware of malware

Wednesday, May 27, 2009, 12:01pm EDT  |  Modified: Wednesday, May 27, 2009, 12:05pm

Some of the riskiest searches on the Internet today are associated either with finding items for free -- such as music or screensavers -- or looking for work that can be done from home, Internet security company McAfee Inc. reported Wednesday.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based McAfee (NYSE: MFE) released a report on the Web's most dangerous search terms that said during the recession it observed a growing number of malicious search results targeted at people who want to save money or earn extra income working at home.

McAfee researched more than 2,600 popular keywords (as defined by Google Zeitgeist, Yahoo Buzz and others sources) to assess the degree of risk for each. Maximum risk refers to the maximum percentage of risky sites a user might encounter on a single page of search results.

As defined by McAfee, the riskiest set of keyword variations was "screensavers" with a maximum risk of 59.1 percent. Nearly six out of the top 10 search results for "screensavers" contain malware. One of the single riskiest search terms in the world is "lyrics," with a maximum risk factor of one in two. Surprisingly, searches using the word Viagra, a popular keyword that is also common in spam e-mail messages, yielded the fewest risky sites. Searches with the safest risk profile included health-related terms and searches about the current economic crisis.

Consumers looking to save money or searching for means of additional income should take note: searchers clicking on results that contain the word "free" have a 21.3 percent chance of infecting their PCs with online threats, such as spyware, spam, phishing, adware, viruses and other malware. "Work from home" searches can be as much as four times riskier than the average risk for all popular terms, McAfee said.

The term "free work from home" carried a 40 percent maximum risk, with variants of that phrase carrying risks from 20 percent up.