The Security Mentor

That's a tough question to answer because you have to figure out what you mean by "the web". Is it every site out there, or just the ones people visit most? Which people?

Spyware research Ben Edelman took 2500 of the top search terms and ran them through search engines. It's as good a way as any to sample what surfers expose themselves to.

Nerd site Ars Technica reports on Ben Edelman's survey of malware on the web. Cutting straight to the bottom line, 3.1% of the links led to places that one security tool considers dangerous. 8.5% of the ads did.

You're probably wondering if all searches are equally dangerous or if some, maybe porn related, are more likely to take you to a bad neighborhood. The most dangerous search was actually "free screensavers". The next big set was mostly music downloads. If you're curious, here's the list of search keywords that lead to dangerous malware sites.