Bing News: Scareware Protection, Top Searches of 2010
Here are a couple of news about Microsoft’s Bing search engine that go well together. The first news is that Bing is trying its best to filter out search results that lead to scareware. Scareware (or rogues or fake antivirus) are applications that try to scam you out of your hard earned money by tricking you. First they trick you into thinking your computer is infected, or under attack, or something along those lines. Then they trick you that they can remove the phony infection they detected – but only after you pay to register the application.
Back in March McAfee, company that specializes in providing security software solutions for home and business users, said that the cybercriminals responsible for coming up with scareware make more than $300 million by scamming users all over the world. McAfee also said that for the number of scareware scams has increased 400% for the past year and by 660% for the past two years.
As you can see, scareware is a serious problem, a problem that Bing decided to tackle like this: when Bing identifies a site that hosts scareware or is infected with scareware, that site will not appear in the list of search results.
“As Scareware is extremely transient, appearing and disappearing on sites very quickly, it is likely we may miss a few pages. You can help us by informing us of any pages that may appear to host scareware through our support form. In the drop-down list that specifies the problem, please select “Other”, fill out the remainder of the form and hit 'submit',” said the Bing team in a blog post.
Moving on, here’s the second Bing-related news: the Bing team has put together a top 10 of the most popular search queries of 2010. You can check it out below.
Top 10 Search Queries of 2010
“As 2010 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect on the year’s most popular search trends. While topical items like Swine Flu and Stock Market topped the list in 2009, this year rankings reflects the popularity of celebrity news. This year’s most searched for topic was Kim Kardashian which received 20% more searches than the second most popular term: Sandra Bullock,” commented the Bing Team in a blog post.
Back in March McAfee, company that specializes in providing security software solutions for home and business users, said that the cybercriminals responsible for coming up with scareware make more than $300 million by scamming users all over the world. McAfee also said that for the number of scareware scams has increased 400% for the past year and by 660% for the past two years.
As you can see, scareware is a serious problem, a problem that Bing decided to tackle like this: when Bing identifies a site that hosts scareware or is infected with scareware, that site will not appear in the list of search results.
“As Scareware is extremely transient, appearing and disappearing on sites very quickly, it is likely we may miss a few pages. You can help us by informing us of any pages that may appear to host scareware through our support form. In the drop-down list that specifies the problem, please select “Other”, fill out the remainder of the form and hit 'submit',” said the Bing team in a blog post.
Moving on, here’s the second Bing-related news: the Bing team has put together a top 10 of the most popular search queries of 2010. You can check it out below.
Top 10 Search Queries of 2010
- Kim Kardashian
- Sandra Bullock
- Tiger Woods
- Lady Gaga
- Barack Obama
- Hairstyles
- Kate Gosselin
- Walmart
- Justin Bieber
- Free
“As 2010 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect on the year’s most popular search trends. While topical items like Swine Flu and Stock Market topped the list in 2009, this year rankings reflects the popularity of celebrity news. This year’s most searched for topic was Kim Kardashian which received 20% more searches than the second most popular term: Sandra Bullock,” commented the Bing Team in a blog post.
