More than five per cent of the sites on the web could cause security risks, with Cameroon’s .cm domain the most dangerous, according to the third annual State of the Mal Web report from security giant McAfee, released today.

The firm scanned 27 million web sites and 104 top level domains (TLDs) using its SiteAdvisor and TrustedSource technology and judged that 5.8 per cent pose a security risk – that is more than 1.5 million risky web sites.

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While not exhaustive, the report is a good snapshot of the state of malware on the web. Last year’s most risky domain, Hong Kong’s .hk, dropped to 34th spot following a clamp down on dubious registrations, while the world’s most popular, .com, jumped from ninth to second most dangerous.

“This report underscores how quickly cyber criminals change tactics to lure in the most victims and avoid being caught. Last year, Hong Kong was the riskiest domain and this year it is dramatically safer,” said Mike Gallagher, chief technology officer for McAfee Labs.

“Cyber criminals target regions where registering sites is cheap and convenient, and poses the least risk of being caught.”

Cameroon’s .cm domain has long been popular with domain name scammers, or typosquatters, who register sites with the intention of getting traffic from unsuspecting users who mistype ‘.com’.

These sites are either monetised with online ads or infected with malware and other potentially unwanted programs, said McAfee.

Over a third of .cm’s were found to pose a security risk.

Twitter users who lack an audience for their messages can now buy followers.

Australian social media marketing company uSocial is offering a paid service that finds followers for users of the micro-blogging service.

Followers are available in blocks starting at $87 (£53) for 1,000. The biggest block uSocial is selling is 100,000 people.

USocial said businesses and individuals were queuing up to use its follower finding service.

Find and follow

Leon Hill, chief executive of uSocial, said the company finds potential followers by searching Twitter and working out what individual users are interested in. It also profiles where people are so it can more closely match users with those they might want to follow.

USocial then sends messages to potential followers telling them about the new Twitter user they might want to follow.

“It’s up to the user to follow them or not,” said Mr Hill. He added that uSocial continues to look for followers until the specified number had signed up.

USocial has about 150 customers that had bought followers and had another 80-90 campaigns about to roll out.

A broad range of clients had signed up to buy followers, said Mr Hill including educational organisations, companies and marketing firms.

“A woman who runs yoga classes is one of our clients,” he said. “So are some religious organisations including one man that just wants to get the word out about God.”

“Twitter started as a way for just friends to keep in touch,” said Mr Hill. “As with any social media site once they get big, every business or marketer jumps on the bandwagon.

Twitter is becoming one of the key viral channels

Robin Goad, Hitwise
“It’s an excellent marketing medium,” he said.

USocial estimated that each follower on Twitter was worth about 10 cents a month to a company that got them to sign up. The money would be made from adverts and sales on websites that followers click through to.

Robin Goad, a research director at Hitwise who has analysed Twitter growth, said businesses were definitely starting to sign up to the micro-blogging service.

“At the moment, it’s mainly media and internet content businesses,” he said. “Transactional companies are struggling to find a way to drive real pounds and dollars from it.

“Companies are building up as many followers as they can and trying to monetise them in the future,” he added.

The growing commercial use of Twitter was presenting the network with a few problems, said Mr Goad.

In particular, he said, Hitwise was starting to see the hijacking of hashtags - labels that bring all the messages about a subject together.

In late June, furnishings firm Habitat used tags associated with protests in Iran to attempt to drive people to its site. The firm has since apologised for its actions.

Some Twitter users were also starting to send out messages that are only about a product or service - effectively spam, said Mr Goad.

“Twitter is becoming one of the key viral channels,” he said.

Twitter might cope better with the creeping commercialisation than other social media sites, he said.

“It’s interesting in the way it has developed,” said Mr Goad. “Hashtags and re-tweets have developed organically rather than been designed from the top down.

“One advantage it has over other services is that it can change quickly if hashtags become a polluted medium and it might keep one step ahead of the spammers,” he said.

“We’ve yet to see people defecting to the next big thing.”

The US Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) has already begun to receive reports of spam and malicious e-mail attacks targeting the deaths of actress Fawcett and pop legend Jackson.

Shortly after news of Jackson’s death broke yesterday, users flooded onto the web for more information. The resulting crush of traffic brought down popular web sites such as Google and Twitter as users rushed to obtain and share information.

Spammers and malware writers are now also expected to flood the internet with their own contributions, according to experts.

“Every time a disaster happens or news about some celebrity reaches the media, malware writers try to take advantage of it,” wrote McAfee researcher Guilherme Venere in a blog posting.

“Watch out for spam offering links to ‘news’ or ‘pictures’ of deceased celebrities.”

US-CERT is also advising users to avoid clicking on any links or attachments contained in unsolicited messages. Users are also being advised to install and maintain updated anti-virus software.

In a blog posting, the firm’s director of product management, RJ Pittman, explained that search volume began to increase around 2pm PDT on Thursday and ‘skyrocketed’ by 3pm, finally stabilising at around 8pm.

“The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack,” he wrote.

“As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a ‘We’re sorry’ page before finding the articles they were looking for.”

Many will be surprised that Google mistook a simple spike in traffic, albeit a massive one, for an automated attack. According to Pittman, last week also saw one of the largest mobile search spikes ever seen, with 5 of the top 20 searches about Jackson.

Google wasn’t the only site caught out by the extraordinary events. The Los Angeles Times web site also crashed soon after it broke the news of Jackson’s death.

Twitter’s infamous ‘Fail Whale’ was also called into action as servers at the micro-blogging site crashed as 66,000 Tweets were made within a 60-minute period.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine has shown steady growth in the US for the second straight week, according to the latest figures from research firm comScore. The data shows that Bing recorded a 12.1 per cent share of search results over the working week of 8 to 12 June, and a 16.7 per cent daily search penetration level. AdvertisementThe numbers are up from an 11.3 per cent search result share the during the previous week, and a 9.1 per cent share in the week prior to Bing’s full release. “It appears that Bing has continued to generate interest for the second consecutive week,” said comScore senior vice president Mike Hurt.

“This early data reflects a continued positive market reaction to Bing in the initial stages of its launch.” Bing’s early success will be welcome news for Microsoft. The company has been hoping to raise its search presence to cash in on the lucrative search advertising market currently dominated by Google. The company has made in-house projects such as Bing the centrepiece of its search strategy ever since a deal to acquire Yahoo fell through last summer.

Mozilla has announced that its new Firefox 3.0.11 browser was downloaded 150 million times during the first 24 hours of becoming available.

The impressive figures followed a statement from Apple recording just 11 million downloads of its new Safari 4 browser in three days.

Advertisement”I just read that Apple is reporting 11 million Safari 4 downloads in just three days. That’s pretty amazing. I’d like to follow up that report with one of my own,” said Asa Dotzler, director of community development at Mozilla, in a blog post before boasting of the record number of Firefox downloads.

It is likely that both companies included automatic updates in the download figures. This is when the latest version of a browser is pushed out to users via an update tool.

Firefox 3.0.11 was released on 11 June and is mainly a security and stability update. The update builds on the major Firefox 3 browser launch in June last year, which had eight million unique downloads on the first day, setting a new Guinness World Record.

Among the new features in the Safari 4 browser, which was released on 8 June, are the ability to view history files in the iTunes ‘cover flow’ style, and improved archiving of browsing history. The update also fixes 51 security flaws.

Headlining the Safari 4.0 release, however, is the new Nitro JavaScript engine. The company said that the new engine significantly improves JavaScript performance and could get even faster when the company releases the 64-bit OS X Snow Leopard update later this year.

Apple said the engine will execute JavaScript nearly eight times faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3.

Internet Explorer continues to dominate the global browser market, followed by Firefox and then Safari.

Samsung has introduced a new handset which the company promised will be amongst the most powerful on the market.

The company said that the new Jet handset would use a processor running at up to 800mhz and offer such features as multi-touch support, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support and a sharper screen quality.

AdvertisementSamsung hopes that the Jet will be able to take advantage of what has been a growing demand for computing power in handsets to keep up with more complex software offerings.

Apple recently beefed up the processing power for its iPhone 3G S handset, pushing the speed from 400mhz to 600mhz.

In addition to the new processor and WBGA AMOLED screen, the Jet will use the company’s new TouchWiz 2.0 interface. Samsung hopes that the device will appeal in an increasingly crowded smartphone market that recently added the iPhone 3G and Palm Pre.

“Samsung Jet provides a seamless and unrivalled mobile experience as a result of our accumulated technology leadership and pursuit of perfect craftsmanship,” said JK Shin, executive vice president and head of mobile communications for Samsung.

“Our aim is to deliver ultimate satisfaction to our consumers and I believe that Samsung Jet answers the calls of today’s mobile users who want smart features and easy-to-use user interface.”

It is an unfortunate fact that the majority of website owners out there don’t understand some of the preliminary concepts behind search engine optimization.

Now, if you are one of those individuals who don’t understand the search engine basics, NOW is definitely the time to learn.  Understanding how search engines work could be worth thousands of dollars to your online business…..
 
To make sure you start off on the right foot, we’ll cover five terms that you will likely hear on a daily basis, but may not fully understand.

Algorithm

Algorithm is really just a fancy word for “formula.”
Whenever one of the search engines ranks your site, it uses this formula to figure out how
relevant your site is for people doing the searching.

So the search engine will look at your site’s content, your keywords, your inbound links, and
so on, and then calculate your position on the search results page.

The more relevant the search engines determine your site to be using the formula, the higher
they’ll place you on the results page.

Algorithms are top secret, and they’re frequently being “tweaked,” so it’s possible to earn a
high ranking, only to suddenly lose it for no apparent reason!

Page Rank

Page Rank is calculated by Google, and is a measure of how they value your
site.

Page Rank is measured on a scale of 0 to 10, with the average being 3 or 4. To calculate it,
Google looks at factors like your content, and the number of one-way links pointing to your
site.

The links are an important factor in the calculation. The more other sites consider you to be a
good and relevant resource (and therefore link to you), the more Google will think so, too.

To see your (and other sites’) page rank, you need to download the Google Toolbar.

Link popularity

Most people know what links are, but did you know that some kinds of
links can help your search engine placement, while others might actually hurt it?

Take “reciprocal” links, for instance…

If you link to someone’s site, and they link back to you, that’s considered a reciprocal link…
and the search engines do NOT like them.

That’s because, at one time, the search engines just looked at the number of sites that linked
to you, assuming the more links you had, the better your site was.

Of course, it didn’t take people long to start getting as many sites as possible to link to them,
no matter whether the sites were relevant or not, just to improve their ranking…
… and the search engines figured out just as quickly that this was going on.

Nowadays, the best link is a one-way link from a relevant website to you.

Keyword Phrase

Where we used to talk about keywords, more and more, we’re talking
about keyword phrases.

This is because, at this stage in the Internet’s evolution, so MANY people have already
targeted most single words, that there’s not much value in going after them anymore.

So when people look for keywords to target now, they look for keyword phrases, which
contain 2, 3, 4 (or more) words.
The value of using keyphrases is that you can be much more specific about what your site (or
individual pages within the site) are about.

Site structure

This refers to the way your website is organized, how the pages are linked
together, and how your menu works (some people refer to site structure as the “information
architecture”).

The structure of your site not only helps your visitors move more freely through the pages,
and find the information they’re looking for more quickly, it can also help improve your
rankings in the search engines.

That’s because a well structured site has all of the relevant pages carefully linked together,
and the search engines love relevant and related content.

By understanding these five basic concepts, and how they effect your search results, you’ll be in a much better position to get started with your optimization efforts.

It really shouldn’t be this much of a media sensation, but let’s face it: Everybody’s talking about how Facebook is finally letting members reserve vanity URLs, letting them customize the Web addresses that lead to their profiles. The feature goes live at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday (9:01 p.m. PDT on Friday) and already, the pundits are going mad.

“This is more than 200 million users, already engaged, simultaneously scrambling in the greatest territory dash since the Oklahoma Territory’s land run of 1889, albeit with fewer shotgun injuries,” author Douglas Rushkoff wrote in an editorial piece on The Daily Beast about the occasion.

Well, it’s not quite that momentous. The thing about vanity URLs is that they’re nothing new: MySpace has made it possible for members to replace the string of numbers in their profiles with www.myspace.com/username for years now. Aside from the fact that your profile may have more “Google juice” and it’ll be easier to tell people how to find you on the social network, this isn’t going to be a huge deal for Facebook members–yet. Except that we all get possessive, and the territory battle for your full name, your old college nickname, or your AOL screen name circa 1996 could get ugly.

The potential difficulty for some users is that Facebook is leaving a lot of questions unanswered. So here’s CNET News’ quick cheat sheet to what will and what might happen–in case you were wondering.

What happens when the vanity URL feature goes live?

Until this point, Facebook members’ profiles have been accessible by unique URLs, but they’re hard to remember because they use identification numbers rather than custom names. But starting Saturday at midnight Eastern, Facebook will start bringing up an alert message to members who visit the site–unless they’re members who registered after 3:00 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, or brands that created “fan pages” after May 31. If your Facebook account falls under these criteria, there may be a delay because of Facebook’s concern that people will snap up names just to “squat” on them and sell them. That’s been a problem in the domain name business for about as long as the Web has been around.

So, assuming you fit Facebook’s timeline, the alert message will pop up and give you a number of options for selecting your new custom name: your full name, your first name and last initial, your first initial and last name, or other options that happen to be available. You can also type in your own, provided it’s at least five characters long and doesn’t include any characters besides letters, numbers, and the dot symbol (though presumably you can only use the dot in between alphanumeric characters). It doesn’t appear to be a mandatory switch, though Facebook will probably keep bugging you about it if you don’t switch immediately.

Are any names taken already?

Yeah, if your name is “Mark Zuckerberg” but you aren’t that Mark Zuckerberg, you might not get what you want even if you’re the first guy logging in at 12:01 a.m. Some Facebook employees have already started using their vanity URLs, and some very popular brands’ “fan pages” have them set already as well. Facebook has a request form for businesses that want to make sure their trademarks stay out of other members’ user names.

More recently, Facebook also reserved names for some public figures who were at the risk of impersonation or URL squatting, and additionally offered names early to some journalists and analysts covering or working with Facebook–which means that, yes, www.facebook.com/carolinemccarthy is reserved already. (For what it’s worth, Facebook told me I could accept that user name that they’d reserve, but if I wanted any other one I’d have to wait until the public name selection became available.

So it doesn’t have to include my real name?

Facebook has always been adamant about making sure that members use their real names in their profiles. That’s not the case with the new vanity URLs; you are officially allowed to use a nickname, your Twitter username, or the results from what happens when you run your name through a pirate name generator, as long as nobody’s claimed it already. If it contains obscenities, though, Facebook will probably flag it for removal.

Is it really true that I can’t change it?

That’s what it sounds like. Facebook has well over 200 million members. Customer service has never been its greatest strength, either. Good luck getting them to accept your extremely urgent need to add your middle name.

Will Facebook’s servers hold up?

We don’t know. But considering the PR disaster that would ensue if Facebook crashed during the “land grab,” it’s safe to assume that the social network has been working very hard to make sure it can withstand the onslaught of members eagerly logging on as early as they can.

“We underwent testing before announcing the feature and we are taking steps to handle additional traffic,” Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said in an e-mail. “It’s hard to get into specifics since it’s difficult to predict what traffic will actually be like.”

For a second opinion, we sent an e-mail over to a representative at uptime monitoring firm Pingdom to see if it thinks there’s a serious possibility that Facebook could crash entirely. Its answer: probably not.

“What I suspect is that we won’t see any slowdown, and if we do it won’t be much,” the company’s e-mail response read. “But who knows? The only ones with a clue right now are Facebook’s engineers. However, if they have enough of a performance margin for several months of organic growth in their user base, they should be able to handle the increased number of visitors tomorrow.”

Where will this go from here?

Facebook user names could go in a heck of a lot of directions; the post announcing the vanity URLs coyly hinted that “we expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook user name in the future.” It’s a good guess that at some point you’ll be able to log into the site with your user name, rather than your e-mail address. This, obviously, could then be extended to sites using the Facebook Connect or even the site’s forthcoming virtual currency.

So what do I do now?

If you care enough about Facebook vanity URLs to have read this all the way through, I guess it’s time to set an alarm clock.