Searcher beware: Bing has twice as many poison links as Google

[nsane.forums]

A new Sophos study claims that Microsoft's Bing search engine has twice as many 'poison links' as Google, with image searches in particular being plagued by Blackhole exploits and malware.

Microsoft prides itself on claiming that Bing gives more relevant results than Google, and a new study claims that it's definitely true - at least if you're looking for viruses.

Over at Sophos' Naked Security blog, Fraser Howard says that compared to Google users, Bing users encounter twice as many 'poisoned links,' or websites that contain malware and exploits like Blackhole. A whopping 92% of poison links encountered on Bing come from images. Howard says that three out of the six images shown below redirect to malicious sites:

Now, why does Bing have more poisoned links than its competitors? That's a good question, and one that Sophos doesn't offer an answer to. It's possible, though, that it really doesn't have that problem - maybe it's just that a large portion of Bing users are less tech savvy than Google users, and possbily less skilled when it comes to avoiding malware. Since Sophos' findings rely on the number of malicious redirects encountered by their security software, it's not exactly set in stone that Bing has more poison links than Google, just that Sophos users are encountering more malware through Bing than through Google.

More importantly, what can you do to protect yourself when you're searching? Besides buying lots and lots of Sophos products, it's generally a good idea to look at the URL before you click on it, and make sure that you really know where you're going. And most importantly, try not to be stupid.

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[mikie]

I see lots of peoples browsers set to Bing lately. How they are getting changed to bing, I dont know.

Many will ask me if I know how to reset it to the yahoo main page, so they have easy access to email and a dose of news.

[calguyhunk]

I see lots of peoples browsers set to Bing lately. How they are getting changed to bing, I dont know.

Many will ask me if I know how to reset it to the yahoo main page, so they have easy access to email and a dose of news.

Tends to happen when you keep clicking "Next" during program installations without checking/unchecking the dialogue boxes ;)

Think about it, could be worse. Could be an Ask Toolbar on top of your browser window :o :hehe: