Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Whenever an Internet security company issues a report or study about the state of Internet security, your first reaction should focus on checking the security of your wallet. Fear became a big part of the marketing plans for security companies ever since the Melissa and I Love You viruses hit around the turn of the new century; Sept. 11th cemented the sales game plan by adding cyberterrorism concerns to the mix.

Tech journalists have to balance that cynicism with the need to pass along information that helps promote safe Internet practices for businesses and consumers. Companies who have been in this space for a long time and spend a lot of money searching for bad software usually get a long look, as McAfee should with its new report, “Mapping the Mal Web Revisited.” The headline for the associated press release says it all: “McAfee Inc. Names Most Dangerous Domains to Surf and Search On the Web.”

McAfee used its own SiteAdvisor software (of course) to investigate the security of global web domain names and found that Hong Kong (.hk) and China (.cn) websites give you the best chance of picking up unwanted spyware, browser exploits, viruses and other forms of malicious code. This casts a potential cloud on all that Western investment money now streaming to China, not to mention the flood of visitors expected this summer for the Beijing Olympics.

The safest country domain to search and surf? Finland (.fi).

McAfee says your chances of picking up malware from websurfing increased 41 percent year-over-year. Picking up a nasty dose of bad code simply by downloading ringtones or screensavers also went up from 2007. As always, kids, consider the source, whether it’s a ringtone or an Internet security study.

Read [McAfee Inc. ]

You can expect louder product announcements from Yahoo! after the Deal that Didn’t Happen. Jerry Yang and Co. want to get the word out in a hurry about new features and services to boost the stock, quench shareholder anger and convince everyone that faith in its future is justified.

Releasing the beta of SearchScan may help. Yahoo is using McAfee’s SiteAdvisor to alert users of any potential for spam, viruses or other malware. The feature appears in the upper right hand corner of your Yahoo! search results - right under the company logo - and is active by default. 

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An 11-year old sixth grader from Sherwood, Arkansas is presently his school’s computer network administrator. John Penn of Victory Baptist School took over the school’s network when the former IT admin just left, leaving her mother, the school’s librarian, additional workload as computer support.

Penn who likes to read computer trade magazines, has always been know as the computer whiz in his school. When he took over the job, he found out that old Windows 98 PCs, all of 60 of them, did not have any anti-virus installed. He then suggested for the school to spend some money on the McAfee Secure Internet Gateway Appliance.  Before this, he had to map out the network first on his own. Now, Penn is pressing the school to upgrade the system to Windows 2000 so managing the computers will be done centrally, meaning he doesn’t have to manually update each computer. 

His parents always knew that John has a knack for computers but never thought he could be a network admin at age 11. His mother Paula, the school’s librarian, is still hovering around John, since he still is a kid.  This summer, John Penn hopes to get his A+ certification. 

Read [switched]