More Failing Grades: Spyware Quiz Update
Posted by Hannah Rosenbaum on May 5, 2006 06:00 PM
A quick update: on April 25 we posted the initial results of the Web’s first ever “Spyware Quiz”. A week and a half later, the number of quiz takers has jumped from 14,000 to over 97,000 (thanks in part to a mention on techie news site Slashdot) but quiz scores have remained consistently poor. The test, which asks users to identify the safe sites in popular categories (screensavers, smileys, free games, lyrics, and file-sharing applications), continues to confirm that users have an extremely difficult time distinguishing between safe sites and sites littered with spyware. Our test, which required users to judge safety based on the site’s appearance, illustrates that appearances provide little indication of site safety.
• An alarming 96% tagged at least one dangerous site as safe.
• The average user got 5 out of the 8 questions correct, or a score of 63%. Not exactly a grade to tack up on your fridge.
The lyrics question continues to prove particularly difficult: only 26% of quiz takers correctly identified azlyrics.com as the spyware-free lyrics site. Sleek looking blubster.com also tricked many users into thinking its p2p program is safe: 40% of quiz takers got this question was wrong. Blubster’s home page may appear clean, but its download is anything but.
More recent quiz takers did perform better at identifying eMule as a spyware-free file-sharing application. Our initial results revealed that only 39% of quiz takers got this question right while our latest results find that 51% of quiz takers answered correctly. This is likely due to greater familiarity and usage of eMule among frequent Slashdot readers.
These latest results further emphasize the dangers users face when searching online for free downloads. Appearances deceive. No matter how sharp a site’s design may be, spyware could be lurking beneath the surface. Even the most experienced Internet users may fall victim to being fooled into thinking a dangerous site is safe.
Some test takers complained that they know enough to avoid these categories entirely and that others should too. A safe practice, no doubt. But not necessary. There are many safe alternatives, even within categories that attract adware and spyware. Others said the test is flawed because the taker is asked to judge site safety solely by its appearance. We submit that this is exactly what most users do, including many Web experts. To the users who say they carefully perform their due diligence at every site before downloading, we support your caution, but we believe that for the vast majority of the browsing public, we don’t think that it’s reasonable to expect users to always have to spend an extensive amount of time investigating a site’s practices. That’s why SiteAdvisor’s done the digging for you- there are plenty of safe download sites out there and we want to make it easier for you to find them.
Comments
I have to admit, I love what SiteAdvisor is doing so far, but I think they can step it up a notch, especially if there is going to be a paid version.
I am a big fan of using a custom hosts file. I use one on my main PC and I have my home network set up so that by blocking a web site on my main PC I block it on all other PCs on the LAN. I think it would be AWESOME if I could download a custom HOSTS file from SiteAdvisor with all of the red sites listed in it. I already use the MVPs HOSTS File but it misses a lot of the red sites on SiteAdvisor's list. SiteAdvisor is great at detecting red url's but it would be helpful to have some option to totally block all red urls, either through SiteAdvisor or via the HOSTS file.
Also I think that SiteAdvisor could do a better job at classifying Ad Servers. The thing about ad servers is that most of the time they serve harmless ads, but sometime they serve ads that can be a real pain to deal with. I am surprised more ad servers don't at least have yellow rating or some identification that it is a possible ad server.
This tool is a great step in the right direction.
I dream of an internet where you could give a monkey access to a PC on a high speed connection, set him surfing for a few hours and at the end realize that all of the spyware and adware he had tried to access had been totally blocked. SiteAdvisor has made the monkey-proof internet one step closer to a reality. Keep up the GREAT work!
BMR777
Posted by: Brandon Rusnak | May 6, 2006 12:37 PM