The BBC report that if you go looking for “free screensavers” you are highly likely to get a lot more than you bargained for. Researchers used Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask search engines and discovered that even the well-known search engines would happily point searchers in the direction of sites with that were going to attempt to change users’ browser settings, install nasty software or deluge users with spam.

The report looked at the websites returned for 1,394 popular keywords searches found via Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask.

The results returned for each search term were then analysed using the Site Advisor security tool. Once installed this piece of software warns users when they browse websites known to be dangerous.

The most benign of the pages that Site Advisor flags up try to change browser settings (to redirect people to ad sites) and the most dangerous deluge users with spam or bundle adware and spyware in with downloads.

In one case signing up with one site led to a test e-mail address getting more than 300 spam messages per week.

So what were the most dangerous search terms?

Ouch.

The moral of the story? Be vigilant! Safe surfing behaviour. Keep your antivirus and antispyware tools up to date. You don’t get anything for nothing – especially on the internet.