Like the real world, the virtual  world of the Web has some dangerous addresses. A new report, released Wednesday by security technology firm McAfee, says Hong Kong's .hk domain has jumped over 28 others to become the most dangerous domain on the Web.
The report, titled Mapping the Mal Web Revisited, found that 19.2 percent of all Web sites ending in the .hk domain were a security threat for Web users. China, with a .cn domain, is in second place with more than 11 percent of its sites risky.
Tokelau Improves Over Last Year
The .hk domain replaced last year's number-one dangerous domain, .tk in Tokelau. The real-world Tokelau is a tiny island in the South Pacific, occupied by only 1,500 people. Its domain dropped to 28th place this year. Samoa, a group of islands also in the South Pacific, also improved its .ws domain, to 12th riskiest.
Apparently, the McAfee report helped Tokelau wake up to its reputation. According to Jeff Green, senior vice president of product development at McAfee, last year's report spurred the domain manager in Tokelau to review its policies.
Green added that virtual threats are constantly changing. "Web sites that are safe today," he said, "can be dangerous tomorrow. Surfing the Web based on conventional wisdom is not enough to avoid risk online."
While some virtual countries are becoming known as unsafe, others are getting a reputation as having the safest domains. For instance, Finland, with a .fi domain, has overtaken Ireland's .ie as the safest domain, with just .05 percent of its sites risky. Second place as the safest is Japan's .jp domain.
270 Percent Jump for the Philippines
Romania (.ro) and Russia (.ru) are still in the top five most dangerous domains, with 6.75 and 6 percent, respectively, of their sites risky. The Philippines, with a .ph domain, had an explosion in riskiness, with a 270 percent jump.
But to be a risky domain, you don't have to be country-based. Among generics, one of the riskiest domains is .info, with 11.8 percent of sites presenting a security threat. This makes it the third most dangerous domain overall. The U.S. government .gov domain is the safest, and the most popular domain -- .com -- is the ninth riskiest.
The study was conducted with the McAfee SiteAdvisor technology, and analyzed 9.9 million heavily visited sites in 265 country and generic domains.
If anything, the risks of surfing in general are greatly increasing, with the report indicating that the chance of downloading spyware, adware or viruses increased by more than 40 percent over 2007. Sites that offer downloads like ringtones and screen savers had an increase in security risk, from 3.3 percent last year to 4.7 percent.
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