Security firm McAfee has drawn up a list of the domains which are home to the websites most likely to pose a safety threat to you when browsing the internet.

Using the criteria McAfee's popular SiteAdvisor tool uses to give a website a red, yellow or green rating, domains such as those owned by Romania (.ro) and Russia (.ru) are among the riskiest places to surf.

“When it comes to safety, it turns out that the web is no different than the physical world. There are safe neighbourhoods and safe web domains, and then there are places no one should ever visit,” said Mark Maxwell of McAfee.

As well as listing the 'no-go' areas of the web, McAfee has also catalogued countries that operate domains with a low risk of compromising your online security. Finland, Norway and Sweden are the safest, with Ireland and the UK not far behind.

McAfee's SiteAdvisor is a free tool that categorises websites, giving 'Red' ratings to sites that fail tests for spyware, viruses, spam and suchlike. 'Yellow' ratings are given to sites which pass the safety tests but which still have nuisances, such as excessive pop-ups.

Sites that pass all the tests are given a 'Green' rating.

http://www.mcafee.com/uk/

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