It's a question a lot of people ask themselves when surfing the internet - will this website give me a virus? Contrary to popular belief, websites which may come across as dodgy, or may in fact be operating in an illegal manner, may not be causing the most harm.
According to Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report, mainstream websites are actually 21 times more likely to infect your computer with malware than an illegal file-sharing site.
The potential viruses actually come from advertisements rather than the website itself, which can help them escape any filters the host may have in place. In actuality, it's more likely that a hacker will attack an advertising company to send malware through all websites the company has ads on.
In fact Cisco's report identifies online advertisements as being 182 times more likely to deliver malicious content than pornographic websites. The report added that conventional wisdom says to align malware with these 'bad' sites; but that this is an "outdated notion".
Sites like eBay and Amazon are attractive for hackers because of the huge, family-oriented audience who are largely unaware of the risks with online ads. This also makes predicting, and therefore avoiding, harmful malware a very difficult task without exceptional web filtering.
If you're a business owner who's looking to avoid these malware advertisements, WebGuard could be the perfect solution. WebGuard keeps viruses, files and unwanted web content outside of your network. Drawing on a comprehensive URL database, or by real-time content inspection which means online ads have no opportunity to reach your business.
