According to a latest update, the greatest risk of stumbling upon a malicious link comes on video entertainment sites such as YouTube. 

As per Kaspersky Lab’s annual report on the evolution of IT threats and spam found that dubious links are widespread on open-access sites. The report also highlighted the on-going use of social network spam and black search engine optimization. 

It is worth noticing that the social networks are at third place. Sites like Facebook and Vkontakte are particularly popular with malicious users spreading harmful content.

It is found that number of browser-based attacks in 2011 increased from 580,371,937 to 946,393,693. The number of web-based attacks in 2011 is 1.63 times the total for 2010, which points to a much slower rate of growth than we have seen over the course of the past three years. 

The slowed growth rate of web-based infection attempts is due to the fact that in 2011 malicious users did not use any fundamentally new mass-infection methods in launching attacks against computers. 

Report also indicates that merely 20 countries accounted for 86.4 percent of all malicious hosting detected by Kaspersky Lab. The two biggest offenders are the same as the previous year: the US (with 25.4 percent) and Russia (with 14.6 percent). However, despite the decline in the percentage of malicious hosting services in these countries, it remains at a very high level.

Around the world, online risks rose 2 percentage points in 2011 to 32.3 percent. Furthermore, the arrival of many Western European countries and Japan in the moderate-risk group (countries where 21-40 percent of users are subjected to attacks) is a troubling sign: these users are targeted by the most professional cyber criminals.