Parental Advisory: Risky Lyrics Sites!
Posted by Hannah Rosenbaum on August 29, 2006 10:20 AM
Ranking the Riskiness of MTV Music Video Award Nominees
And the award goes to… Yung Joc and Nitty! The MTV Video Music Awards won't air until August 31, but the results from the McAfee SiteAdvisor "Most Dangerous Lyrics Sites" Survey are already in. So whether or not Yung Joc and Nitty take home one of the coveted "Moon Men" trophies at this year's VMAs, they have already outranked the competition by having the most hazardous lyrics to search for online.
While casting your vote for the best videos and watching the MTV awards show may be a fun and entertaining way to celebrate your favorite musical artists, searching for the lyrics to your favorite songs might leave you in a bit of a funk. (And we're not talking about explicit lyrics content.) With more than 22.3 million searches for lyrics terms being conducted each month (more on this later), this site genre is a prime target for malicious players. Unsafe lyrics sites pose serious dangers: browser exploits, Active X controls that install spyware or adware, excessive pop-ups, and links to other unsafe sites.
The MTV Video Music Awards airs August 31, 2006.
The McAfee SiteAdvisor Most Dangerous Lyrics survey ranks the MTV VMA nominees by the danger of their lyrics searches. After searching Google for each of the nominated artists and songs plus the word "lyrics," we analyzed the safety of the search results using McAfee SiteAdvisor's ratings database of 6.4 million popular Web sites.
The most dangerous lyrics search was for Yung Joc and Nitty's song "It's Goin Down," for which 70% of search results were rated red or yellow by McAfee SiteAdvisor. Christina Aguilera's love profession "Ain't No Other Man," came in second with 60% risky results, earning her the title for Most Dangerous Female Video and Most Dangerous Pop Video. Tied with Aguilera for second place overall, Common's "Testify," and Three 6 Mafia's "Stay Fly" also won for Most Dangerous Hip-Hop Video. On average, 36% of lyrics search results for the nominated songs were links to risky sites and all searches for the nominated songs returned at least one risky site on the first page of results. Green Day's "Wake Me When September Ends" returned the safest lyrics sites with only 10% risky results. Read the full results.
The most dangerous lyrics search was for Yung Joc and Nitty's "It's Goin Down."
SOS (save our systems)
One of the most frequent search result offenders was Anysonglyrics.com, which appeared in searches for 22 of the 44 nominated songs. Anysonglyrics.com insists that its users install an ActiveX control from Zango – giving users Zango's pop-up ads and a Zango toolbar, as well as sending detailed information to Zango about what users search for and what web sites and pages users visit. The site attempts to justify this download by claiming that Zango allows the site's content to be free. But we think the Zango adware installation is misleading for a few reasons.
* The content at Anysonglyrics.com is already available elsewhere for free.
* Accepting Zango may give some users the false impression that money from Zango (and its advertisers) flows through to songwriters, in compensation for reproduction of their lyrics. Zango says "This website is free thanks to Zango … because it's paid for by advertising." But it's just not true: Zango's advertising payments do not flow through to the songwriters who wrote the words on the site. As best we can tell, Anysonglyrics pockets the money it gets from Zango; it doesn't pay that money out to songwriters or music publishers. We're not here to opine on the question of whether Anysonglyrics needs to pay for the lyrics it presents; the music industry says a license is required, and the EFF disagrees. But whatever the answer, Zango's inclusion doesn't help the legality of the Anysonglyrics site.
* Zango's adware and toolbar are completely unrelated to Anysonglyrics.com's content and functionality.
Anysonglyrics.com requires users to download the Zango Search Assistant.
ActiveX controls are frequent nuisances on lyrics sites. Lyricsmine.com also requires the Zango-bundled ActiveX control to view the site's lyrics. The ActiveX controls that we've found on duble.com and lyricsandsongs.com were even more noxious. In our tests, these ActiveX control downloads included, ImIServer, IEPlugin, Roings, and istbar. Once users have visited these sites, Rihanna won't be the only one singing "SOS."
What's Left of Me… and My PC
Just as Nick Lachey mourns his marriage in "What's Left of Me," fans of the soulful stud may be singing a sour tune after searching for his lyrics. His lyrics search results included exploit site Lyricsandsongs.com. This site served excessive pop-ups, which on occasion breached browser security on our test PCs. VMA fans run a very high risk of landing on this site: Lyricsandsongs.com appeared in search results for 70% of the nominated songs, providing ample opportunity for user click through. Emp3world.com, found in our lyrics search for Shakira and Wyclef Jean's "Hips Don't Lie," also made unauthorized changes to our test PCs. Using a hidden iframe, emp3world.com attempted security breaches including cursor and WMF vulnerabilities. This allows malicious code to install a trojan downloader onto the system which can then be used to install other unauthorized programs. For these exploit-infested sites, simply browsing can be harmful to your system. Steer clear.
Who's been linking up?
Relationships between Web sites can help boost traffic. They can also make or break a site's safety rating. Lyrics sites are often rated red due to links to other dangerous lyrics and mp3 sites. Lyriczz.com, found in searches for Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps" and Chamillionaire's "Ridin'," has a red link score for linking to other red lyrics sites, including duble.com and lyricsandsongs.com. Its link analysis also reveals that users are only a click away muzlyrics.com, which then links to malware site coolwebsearch.com.
Lyriczz.com links to red sites, which link to other red other site...
Nothing to Sing About
Some of our previous surveys have assessed the dangers of searching for screensavers of American Idol contestants, summer blockbusters, and World Cup and baseball players. Our lyrics survey confirms our earlier findings that malicious activity often follows pop culture to take advantage of innocent fans. According to Yahoo!'s keyword selector tool, there were 5.1 million searches in June 2006 for the keyword "lyrics" and its top 100 variants. Since Yahoo! search accounts for 23% of all searches, we estimate that there are over 22.3 million total searches per month for lyrics search terms. It's no wonder that scammers have invaded the lyrics space.
The prevalence of dangerous results found in popular lyrics searches is alarming, but music fans need not abstain from searching for their favorite prose. SiteAdvisor's ratings show can help steer users to safe lyrics venues. Stay in control of your PC as you gear up for this year's VMAs. Let the show's celebrity antics and wild outfits supply the shock value instead.
Comments
where is it possible to report a mistake in an entry? A site is yellow rated due to a single erroneous bad shopping experience tag, but it is clear from the quoted whois data that he's talking about the wrong domain.
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/master.com?safe
But I can find no way to report such an error there are no email addresses other than your business developemnt team .
Posted by: Stuart Young | September 14, 2006 06:48 AM