Edelman, B.: Assessing and improving the safety of Internet search engines (2007)
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- Abstract
- Where Internet users go, attackers follow. Users embrace e-mail; then spammers fill their inboxes with junk mail. With the rise in online commerce, phishers trick them into giving up their passwords. Users find handy downloadable applications; adware vendors bundle them with pop-up-spewing add-ons. The rise of Internet search brings a new type of risk. Hostile Web sites might seek to harm users or take advantage of them - whether through spyware, spam, scams, or other bad practices - because search engines often do not filter these sites from their results. Consider this scenario: Suzy wants to perform Beyonce's Crazy in Love for her school talent show. To make sure she dresses the part, she performs a Google search for >celebrity photos<. When she clicks the first search result, celebritypictures.duble.com, she is quickly prompted to install an adware-bundled ActiveX control in order to browse the site's contents. Eager to view photos of her celebrity role model, she accepts the installation of a new browser toolbar and a pop-up serving adware program. In principle, search engines' listing rules, ranking rules, and advertising policies might shield users from some bad practices, and users' good judgment could protect them from others. But empirically, search engines often lead users to dangerous content. My analysis of search engine safety finds bad practices among approximately 5% of search results for popular keywords, or roughly one site per page of search results.
