List of 3 most dangerous website you should not visit ~ welcome to dailybase

List of 3 most dangerous website you should not visit

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Scammers love Twitter since it relies so much on URL shorteners, services that take long Internet addresses and replace them with something briefer.

And it's very simple to hide malware or scams behind shortened URLs. A shortened link that supposedly points to the latest Internet trend-du-jour may be a Trojan horse in disguise.

If You Have to Go There: Simply don't click links. Of course, that takes some of the fun out of Twitter. The other option is to use a Twitter client app. TweetDeck and Tweetie for Mac have preview features that let you see the full URL before you go to the site in question.

Some link-shortening services, such as Bit.ly, attempt to filter out malicious links, but it seems to be a manual process, not an automatic one. TinyURL has a preview service you can turn on.

Threat 3 >> E-mail scams or attachments that get you to install malware or give up personal info

The Place: Your e-mail inbox

Although phishing and infected e-mail attachments are nothing new, the lures that cybercrooks use are constantly evolving, and in some cases they're becoming more difficult to distinguish from legitimate messages. My junk mailbox has a phishing e-mail that looks like a legitimate order confirmation from Amazon. The only hint that something's amiss is the sender's e-mail address.

If You Have to Go There: Don't trust anything in your inbox. Instead of clicking on links in a retailer's e-mail, go directly to the retailer's site.

Threat 4 >> Malware hiding in video, music, or software downloads

The Place: Torrent sites

Torrent sites (such as BitTorrent) are often used for sharing pirated music, videos, or software, and are a trove of malware. No one vets the download files--they may be malware in disguise.

Ben Edelman, privacy researcher and assistant professor at Harvard Business School, thinks torrent sites are the most dangerous places to visit, since they don't have a business model or reputation to defend (by comparison, many porn sites rely on being deemed trustworthy). "The [torrent] customers, they really don't want to pay," he says.

If You Have to Go There: It's probably best to avoid torrent sites entirely, given their untrustworthy content, but if you must visit, use a secondary PC to protect your main system. Use antivirus software, and keep it updated. Scan downloaded files and wait a couple of days before opening them. Brand-new malware can be tricky to catch, but the delay in opening may allow your antivirus software to get the necessary signatures.

Threat 5 >> Malware in photos or videos of scantily clad women

The Place: ‘Legitimate' porn sites

Porn sites have a reputation of being less secure than mainstream sites, but that assumption doesn't tell the whole story. "There is no doubt that visiting Websites of ill-repute is deadly dangerous. If you make a habit of it, it's a given that you'll be attacked at some point," says Roger Thompson, chief research officer with security firm AVG. "Unfortunately, staying away from those sites won't keep you safe by itself, because innocent sites get hacked all the time, and are used as lures to draw victims to the attack servers."

And as mentioned earlier, many porn sites operate as actual, legitimate businesses that want to attract and retain customers. That said, it may be hard to tell the "legit" porn sites from malware-hosting sites that use porn as a lure.

If You Have to Go There: Be suspicious of video downloads, or sites that require you to install video codecs to view videos (see the next threat, below). Using tools like AVG's LinkScanner and McAfee's SiteAdvisor (or SiteAdvisor for Firefox) can help you weed out the malicious sites.

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And, again, consider visiting such sites on a secondary machine. You don't want your browser history on the family PC.

Threat 6 >> Trojan horses disguised as video codecs, infecting your PC with malware

The Place: Video download sites, peer-to-peer networks

If you watch or download video online, you've likely been told to download a video codec--a small piece of software that provides support for a type of video file--at least once. Usually, these bits of software are perfectly legitimate (for example, the popular DivX codec), but some less-than-reputable download services or video sites may direct you to download a piece of malware disguised as a codec. Security software company Trend Micro provides a good example of what these attacks look like.

If You Have to Go There: Your safest option is to stick with well-known video sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. And for catching up on the latest episodes of your favorite TV shows, sites and services like Hulu, TV.com, ABC.com, and iTunes are safer than peer-to-peer networks.

Threat 7 >> Geolocation--your smartphone and perhaps other parties know where you are

The Place: Your smartphone

The smartphone market is still in its infancy, really, and so are the threats. One possible concern is the use--or abuse--of geolocation. Although plenty of legitimate uses for location data exist, the potential for inappropriate uses also exists. In one case, a game listed on the Android Market was in reality a client for a spy app. In a less invidious example, a site called pleaserobme.com showed that--for a time--a stream of FourSquare check-ins indicated that a person was away from their home (the site's goal, mind you, wasn't to condone theft, but to raise awareness of the issue).

As in this example showing restaurants in a San Francisco neighborhood, some smartphone apps, such as Yelp for iPhone, use your physical location to provide you with information on nearby businesses or points of interest.

Apple recently updated its privacy policy to reflect changes in how it handles location data in iOS 4. The policy now states that "to provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use and share precise location data." You can read more on Apple's new privacy terms and what they mean for you.

If You Have to Go There: Be particular about the location-based sites, apps, and services that you use. As shown in the screenshot at right services such as Yelp provide good examples of useful location-aware apps. On the other hand, weigh the privacy implications of services like FourSquare or the new Facebook Places feature, a

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Friday, March 16, 2018