.hk is among the most risky domains

Internet too has its risky places that people shouldn't visit without taking the necessary precautions. McAfee has identified these places and apparently, among ccTLDs (country code top-level domains), domains from Hong Kong (.hk) are the ones that entail risks or that unleash malware onto users most often. An impressive 19.2 % of all websites with a .hk extension are a threat; the sad list is completed with China (.cn), the Philippines (.ph), Romania (.ro) and Russia (.ru). On the other hand, Finland (.fi), Japan (.jp), Norway (.no) and Colombia (.co) have very safe ccTLDs.

This “guide to danger” has been compiled by means of data provided by McAfee’s SiteAdvisor tool. This toolbar, that you can install for free, is based on searches that McAfee’s spiders conducted on the web; these spiders download all content offered on websites: software, screensavers, photo upload tools, etc. Consecutively, specialists observe if malware, viruses or spyware are installed on the test computer. Websites that give themselves up to such malicious practices are added to blacklists. The SiteAdvisor tool warns the Internet user through icons that are green, orange or red depending on the risk represented by the website that the user wants to visit.

Belgium has the sad honour of ranking 9th in the general top 20 of most riskful domains: 7.83% of .be domain names are part of the risky zone. Fortunately, our country has made some improvement in comparison with 2007, when it came 6th with 6.76%. The Netherlands do not appear in this top 20.
Among generic TLDs, .info has the worst reputation (11.73%), followed by .net (6.28 %) and .name (6.07 %). As for .com and .biz domains, they managed to regain their prestige. Those factors may be helpful to you when choosing the domain name that you want.