Overall safety risk to search engines' users decline by 1 pc: study

Mumbai, June 5 (UNI) The overall safety risk to search engines' users had declined by about one per cent point but sponsored results - those paid by advertisers - remain significantly more risky, according to a study.

McAfee Inc, a global major in the internet security business today published 'The State of Search Engine Safety' - an update on last year's publication on search engine safety by the same name, a release said.

McAfee studied five major US search engines - Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Ask, which accounts for 93 per cent of all search engine use. McAfee analyzed the first 50 search results returned by each search engine for 2,300 popular keywords. The data for the study was analyzed in May this year and was co-authored by noted spyware researcher and McAfee SiteAdvisor Ben Edelman.

''We're encouraged to see some improvement in search engine safety this year. But consumers are still exposed to hundreds of millions of risky searches per month,'' said vice-president Tim Dowling Consumer Growth Initiatives, McAfee SiteAdvisor.

McAfee estimates, there are more than 270 million searches in the US every month that could compromise online safety.

McAfee Inc, based in Santa Clara, California, provides security for systems and networks around the world and has been recognized as such by publications as Time and PC World, the release added.

UNI