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by Dancho Danchev -ZDNN

Which is the most dangerous keyword to search for using public search engines these days? It’s “screensavers” with a maximum risk of 59.1 percent, according to McAfee’s recently released report “The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms“.

Upon searching for 2,658 unique popular keywords and phrases across 413,368 unique URLs, McAfee’s research concludes that lyrics and anything that includes ‘free” has the highest risk percentage of exposing users to malware and fraudulent web sites. The research further states that the category with the safest risk profile are health-related search terms.

Here are more findings:

The categories with the worst maximum risk profile were lyrics keywords (26.3%) and phrases that include the word “free” (21.3%). If a consumer landed at the riskiest search page for a typical lyrics search, one of four results would be risky
The categories with the worst average risk profile were also lyrics sites (5.1%) and “free” sites (7.3%)
The categories with the safest risk profile were health-related search terms and searches concerning the recent economic crisis. The maximum risk on a single page of queries on the economy was 3.5% and only 0.5% risky across all results. Similarly, even the worst page for health queries had just 4.0% risky sites and just 0.4% risk overall.

This isn’t the first time McAfee is attempting to assess the risk percentage of particular search terms, as the company did similar studies in 2006 and 2007. And whereas the research attempts to raise awareness on malicious practices applied by cybercriminals, it also has the potential to leave a lot of people with a false feeling of security since it’s basically scratching the surface of a very dynamic problem.

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by Dancho Danchev - ZDNN

Spammers are no strangers to the ever-growing Twitter. From commercial Twitter spamming tools, to re-tweeting trending topics for delivering their message, a new crafty search technique can provide spammers with fresh and valid emails harvested from Twitter’s users in real-time.

Basically, the search query consists of common phrases such as “email me at” and “contact me at” in a combination with a domain of a spammer’s choice.

The result? A flood of valid and fresh email addresses of Twitter users unaware that their emails will not only get indexed by public search engines, but also, that the output can be syndicated for spamming purposes.

From theory into practice - a day after the tactic was discussed a proof of concept script was released, even though it should be logical to assume that the practice has been taking place for a while now.

Email harvesting has been around since the early days of the Internet, and has therefore greatly evolved throughout the years. From the JS.Yamanner@m worm spreading through a Yahoo Mail flaw in 2006, harvesting @yahoo.com emails from the infected indoxes in order to further propagate, the email harvesting scripts crawling the web and their modern versions, to the Web 2.0 spammer’s mentality of harvesting instant messaging and social networking user names - their database usually ends up as value-added service in a managed spam vendor’s proposition.

In Twitter’s case, their TOS states that:

You are solely responsible for your conduct and any data, text, information, screen names, graphics, photos, profiles, audio and video clips, links (”Content”) that you submit, post, and display on the Twitter.com service
And whereas that should be the case, what Twitter can do to at least slow down this efficient email harvesting approach, is to either allow its users to choose whether or not they would like to have their emails/phone numbers obfuscated (reCAPTCHA Mailhide), or enforce the policy to all users.

By Seb Janacek silicon.com via ZDNN

Just a few short weeks after the Mac trounced competitors in a customer satisfaction survey, the iPhone has repeated the same trick for Apple in the smartphone market.

The iPhone has taken first place in a consumer survey by J D Power published last week, dominating all but one of the categories: physical design, ease of operation, features, operating system, battery aspects and overall satisfaction.

Most iPhone owners won't be surprised to hear it came last in battery performance.

In contrast, RIM's BlackBerry - the competitor against which the iPhone is most often measured - scored highest in battery life but performed poorly in other categories.

According to a recent report by NPD, the BlackBerry has overtaken the iPhone in unit sales for the Q1 2009. RIM has been operating an aggressive buy-one-get-one US campaign and its sales have surged 15 per cent in the first quarter, though presumably at lower than normal hardware margins.

The news will no doubt prompt some doomsayers to predict the death of the iPhone or some other such nonsense and call for Apple to respond immediately with a host of new models.

Assuming it needs to, what could Apple do to drive up iPhone sales? The two obvious answers are to expand the iPhone product portfolio and to end their exclusive deals with carriers. Both ideas have had some coverage in recent weeks in the press and blogosphere.

While rumors of an iPhone 'nano' or 'lite' have been around for some time, the introduction of either looks unlikely in the short to medium term.

Apple is giving out a little at a time with the iPhone. Last year on the hardware front it got 3G connectivity and GPS. One would expect a couple of new features in the near future, possibly a better camera and improved video recording.

Of course the iPhone is really more about software than hardware and the 3.0 update will bring the long-demanded MMS update and, lest we forget, copy-and-paste. Hallelujah!

Battery life on the iPhone remains truly terrible, something I covered in an earlier article. It also appeared at the top of my wish list of 10 missing iPhone features.

It seems likely that Apple will announce new iPhone hardware early this summer. However, I don't think the company will diversify its iPhone product range just yet. Why? Because it doesn't need to. iPhone sales are very strong at the moment (3.8 million in the last quarter) and, according to the old aphorism, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

At the company's last earnings call, Apple's acting CEO Tim Cook said the company "chose from the beginning of the iPhone to focus on one phone for the whole of the world". That strategy is working just fine.

Another option for the company to consider, as a way to sell more iPhones, is to end its exclusive 'one carrier per territory' deals.

I'm not convinced Apple will change this model or if indeed it needs to. With its exclusive deals, Apple can sustain high margins on the iPhone. The company can play carriers off against each other to negotiate the best deal. Breaking from this model will mean losing some bargaining power - and possibly lowering its profit margins.

Lest we not forget that Apple is performing well in the smartphone market. Despite having been a player in less than 25 per cent of the mobile market for under two years, it's already a leading brand and an agenda setter.

iPhone sales remain buoyant despite both a depressed economic climate and the parameters it has set itself with its exclusive partnerships. It can continue to drip feed new products and features rather than rush them to market. New models will undoubtedly come, just not yet.

Personally, I tend to look forward to software releases more than new hardware. With that in mind, the keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference in a month's time should prove exciting.

Predictions will follow later in the month.