Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

How good are you at spotting spyware, spam & phishing traps?

(1/4) > >>

app103:
Mcafee has 2 little quizzes to test your abilities to spot websites with unsafe downloads and those that will share your email address with spammers.

These quizzes are based on real sites.

Using whatever methods you normally use, take the 2 quizzes and see how good you really are at protecting yourself.

Spyware Quiz (average score: 59%)

Spam Quiz (average score: 55%)

And there is one additional phishing quiz, similar in nature to the 2 by McAfee, using real emails samples, but the links are disabled and you can't hover to see the real target.

Phishing Quiz

Eóin:
6 out of 8 on the spyware quiz. But I didn't realise I was supposed to go off and research, my answers were based solely on the screenshots (and some existing knowledge) :D

app103:
That was how I did it too, 7 out of 8 on the spyware one.

PhilB66:
6 oot of 8 on the spyware test by just looking at the screenshots.

f0dder:
Hm, you were supposed to research? I did the same as Eóin, first impressions + previous knowledge. Didn't visit the sites, only looked at the screenshots.

I had 7/8 on the spyware quiz, Tightrope Walker I am :)

FAILURES:
SpoilerI did wrong on the anysonglyrics.com vs. azlyrics.com test, which I sort of expected - it's a bit of a trick question because one of the sites has a "firefox prevented popup window", which obviously makes you go into alert mode. Also, anysonglyrics.com has a "contact" link, which does give a bit of confidence imho.


When judging a site by first looks, I generally look for the following:

Things to be wary of: ringtone advertisements, casino advertisements, "tell all your friends" links, "competitions" of various sorts, "your email address" "login" boxes, smiley/cursor/etc packs, pharmacy/drugs stuff.

Things that inspire confidence: contact links, forums, in some cases login/registration (but other times it screams bloody murder at you).

I failed pretty miserably at the Spam Quiz - 4 of 8. But again, that was based on first impressions, in a real life situation I'd either use a fake/spam email address for that kind of site, or I would do proper research.

FAILURES:
SpoilerFailed on bullseyesgames.com vs. miniclip.com: I would have voted for miniclip because of site design, but I guess it was the ringtones ad of miniclip that threw me off. But of course, why would bullseyegames require login to play games?

Failed on funnyreign.com vs. superlaugh.com: the "JOIN for FREE" email boxes are very suspicious to me. But the "free greeting cards" and "We are now on MYSPACE" at funnyreign didn't seem kosher to me either - I wouldn't have left my email address at either site.

Failed on creditcardmenu.com vs. wiredplasticvisa.com: again, would never have used either (I visit my physical bank for money related matters), but the "retail locations" of wiredplasticvisa seemed like a plus.

Failed on petitionspot.com vs. thepetitionsite.com: thepetitionsite had something looking like a referer ID in the URL bar, I'm very wary of those. Should've looked closer at petitinspot.com, the money stuff and gmail address (instead of using their own domain) is fishy.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page