In the midst of its preparations for the Olympics and the brouhaha over bloggers posting and web censorship during the Olympics, not to mention the aftermath of the recent earthquake, China is in the hot seat once again for having what McAfee calls the highest number of damaging and dangerous web sites housed in its domains. How does one country get saddled with this much evil?

While some of it may be China’s fault much of the blame lies with the domain name registrars and ISP regulators. Lately ISP and domain regulators have been slacking off on policing and securing some domain blocks. As a web surfer, what domains show the most evil tendencies? Those that end in .hk, .cn and .info (Hong Kong, China and Info) are the worst offenders.

When McAfee reports that a site is dangerous to web surfers, what exactly do they mean?first, the sites are usually registered with registrars that have cut corners to increase their bottom line – by lowering the hoops you have to jump through to register, they open the door for malicious sites to flourish.

China doesn’t have a complete corner on the market. Romania is also on the list, as are other countries with lowered standards for monitoring registered domains. The main way these domains are exploited is by creating fraudulent parked web sites.

How can you ensure your own safety? If you are making an internet purchase and the domain ends in .hk, .cn. .info or .ro, think twice before submitting that order. Try and find what you want to buy on a more standard .com or .net domain, if possible. Running anti virus and anti spyware programs also help fight malicious sites, as does checking for spyware and making sure your internet connection is protected.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 9:27 pm under Antivirus.

Read more entries by Leslie Poston.
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