Danger! Search Engines At Work!

Some search terms and categories are more dangerous than others, and likelier to lead to malware according to a new report from McAfee. Among the most dangerous current category and term? Lyrics, of all things.McAfee's ranking of danger words and categories is based on the percentage of malware sites found among the search results. As has been pointed out with some frequency, cybercrooks keep up with the headlines as well with shifting interests, reflected in frequently used search terms, often combining the two.

The economy, for instance, and the need or hope for additional income produced these risk level results, according to McAfee:

Free work from home 40.0% Work from home for free 40.0% Work from home free 40.0% Work from home ideas 25.0% Free work from home jobs 20.0%

"Free" in other contexts than work from home, top of the list, but so is "word unscrambler."

Theoretical or policy-related interest in the economy is sfaer than get-it-for-free concerns: "Economic crisis" carried a risk factor of under 4%, for instance.

"Lyrics" was the top pop category term of all, with more than 26% of returned links being malicious.

Because search is one of the most frequently used business functions (including by employees searching for non-business information while at work) it's worth reminding your people to be careful what they search for -- and what they look into among the results their searches return.

And if they're looking for word scrambled lyrics to songs to sing while searching for free work from home, well...

The complete McAfee report on The Web's Most Dangerous Search Terms is here.