Browsing and searching

On the surface browsing and searching are fairly straightforward. You open a search engine (such as Google, MSN, AOL, Ask, or Yahoo!) and you type in a search word or phrase. You click a link contained in one of the results that appear to go to a Web site. You can use browsers to look up information on weather to know what to wear, follow politics, research financial decisions, and so on.

However, despite the obvious benefits that search tools provide, there are some safety and ethical considerations that every person browsing online must consider.

Before browsing, learn about the data retention and data resell policies of the search engine you are using. If the policies don’t match your comfort level for safety and privacy, consider a different search company.

Ads on search engines and sponsored search results

Major search engines may still offer some of the more blatantly disreputable banner advertising. Clicking these may put you at risk by downloading spyware, adware, or other malware, or asking for private information that will be resold to spammers, telemarketers, snail-mail marketers, and the like.

However, there are other ways in which advertising on search engines or Web sites can place you at risk. The most concerning of these are sponsored ad links. Most users believe that sponsored ads have somehow been vouchsafed for by the hosting company – whether by a search engine company or a Web site owner. This is incorrect. Sponsored ads are placed by companies that have paid the search engine to get top placement. According to McAfee, clicking on sponsored advertising is more likely to deliver malware to your computer than clicking on other links.

Choosing certain search terms, especially those search terms that many teens may be inclined to use, can also place you at risk. For searches that included the word ‘free’, 14 percent of the results led to disreputable or fraudulent sites, according to a McAfee study. The problems people encounter range from hidden fees; misleading billing practices; charges for software that would be free from other sources; changes to your Windows registry settings; the delivery of spyware, adware, and so on; and misuse of your e-mail information to send hundreds of spam e-mails to unsuspecting users who think the e-mail is coming from you.

The illusion of anonymity when browsing

The level of information any site learns about you when you browse (even if you don’t ‘log in’ to a browser) may be considerably more than you realize. As you surf, sites learn more and more about you - your likes/dislikes, your habits, and your purchasing history. Even when a site does not download malware of any kind it still can collect a great deal of information that can be resold or used in other ways. The safest choices is to only go to reputable sites with clear privacy policies.