Most users unable to spot spyware

[Newby]

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/27/0031221&from=rss

Just for fun, I took the quiz:

YOU GOT 8 OF 8 QUESTIONS CORRECT
Rating: Safety Guru

You laugh in the face of spyware and adware. Your practically clairvoyant knowledge of the Web allows you to distinguish between safe sites and those that pose potential danger. (We suspect that you may also know which soda machines might steal your money before you drop a quarter.) Our hats off to you.

Remember that even one misstep can put your PC at risk, so SiteAdvisor's free software can help you always stay safe and in control online.

[Ergot]

Stupid quiz. Stupid results.

[Explicit]

Stupid quiz. Stupid results.

Is it because you did poorly?

[Ergot]

Stupid quiz. Stupid results.

Is it because you did poorly?

Let me quote several people who I share the belief with. If you want to know I got 6/8. Missing BearShare and the Smilie website.

The quiz in question has you choose which of two sites, based on screenshots, has spyware. The sites were all for things like screen savers, song lyrics, and free game downloads. That is a terrible, terrible way to judge a users capability to determine if something has spyware.

It contains no technical information or interactivity whatsoever. No status bar information, no ability to view page source, just screen grabs of random web sites.

This is a completely invalid, unsound test, as there is no technical way to determine the presence of malicious software simply by looking at a page as it initially loads in the absence of any ability to interact with it or at the very freaking least scroll up or down or hover a mouse... sheesh...

It's like blindfolding someone and then blaming them for not being able to catch a baseball pitch, facing away from the thrower, with their bare hands. Of course they won't be able to, if you take away every single useful tool for them to accomplish the task.

The quiz (http://www.siteadvisor.com/quizzes/spyware_0306.h tml [siteadvisor.com]) asks questions like "Which of these smiley download sites is safe?" The answer I'd pick is "I don't care which one is safe, I wouldn't ever download something so pointless and high risk to begin with", but that option isn't available.

Look at the survey before you believe the statistics. What they have shown is so far from the claimed “Based on their choices, a majority of users (65%) would have been infected with adware or spyware many times over”, it’s ridiculous. For example, the first question asks the respondant to choose between two screensaver downloads to determine which is spyware-ridden, by looking at a screenshot of the website _alone_. This presupposes that a) 100% of users would download a screensaver and b) that people would make their choice based on the look of the website and nothing else.

Seriously these are collectively the worst survey and article I’ve ever seen.

[trust]

3/8...

[rabbit]

Fuck.  I didn't even enlarge the thumbs and got 7/8, even though I'd never use any of those sites.

[Joe]

6/8 with no enlarged thumbs. But I should have like 9/8 because I use Linux. =)

[Sidoh]

I agree with Ergot.  This quiz is pointless.

7/8

[MyndFyre]

Damn, one site had spyware delivered through ActiveX.  Unfortunately my IE security settings prevent that from downloading, and it's just not up in FireFox, so I don't know how you were supposed to know that....

7/8

[iago]

The poll is very confusing.  I got 5/8, and all 3 were because I selected the spyware site, not the safe site.  Stupid confusing polls

[MyndFyre]

The poll is very confusing.  I got 5/8, and all 3 were because I selected the spyware site, not the safe site.  Stupid confusing polls

I thought the poll was very straightforward.

Questions 1-4 asked you to choose the safe site.

Questions 5-8 asked you which site offered P2P software that had spyware.

[iago]

Yeah, 1-4 I got mostly wrong.  I only got the first one right, because the instructions were fresh in my mind.  In the other three, I picked the evil site, which made more sense in my brain. 

[Eric]

7/8.  It's not confusing, but definately presumptious in its answers.

[deadly7]

5/8 with no thumbnails enlarged.  I don't use ANY of those sites.  Stupid quiz vote from me, as well.

[igimo1]

Quiz was dumb. no merit.