I’m not really surprised, especially when the country is responsible for more spam than Alan Ralsky on his best days. In a press release from McAfee, they list the safest and most dangerous destinations on the Web for surfers.
On the list, Hong Kong (.hk) takes the lead for being the source of a lot of spyware, malware and rootkits. I wouldn’t doubt if they also were a strong source of Spam that we receive in our inboxes. Following in order on the list of dangerous Web sites are: China (.cn), Philippines (.ph), Romania (.ro) and Russia (.ru).
There is some good news, not all international countries are up to mischief, in the release, McAfee also lists the safest destinations. That includes: Finland (.fi), Japan (.jp), Norway (.no), Slovenia (.si), Columbia (.co). Though it appears that McAfee didn’t count that 99% of us have never actually traveled on a Finland, Norway, Slovenia or Columbia based Web server — that is, they didn’t calculate the volume of traffic. Also, the small country of Tokelau (.tk) domain significantly dropped in the rankings when they stopped offering free domains. This indicates that the price of domain registration may relate to the riskiness of a Web site.
Where does America stand? The .com domain suffix sits at #9 for the most riskiest domains. I’m sure that we could make US domains safer if ICANN would actually enforce their provisions and require legitimate addresses on WHOIS records.
McAfee published their findings in their report, Mapping the Mal Web Revisited [PDF Warning] and ther data was sourced from SiteAdvisor rankings of over 9.9 million Web sites.
[Found via Techmeme]
