Rogue AV results lurk in contamination comparison searches

According to Wikipedia and a bunch of other unverifiable sources I can't remember the name of, the amount of radiation contamination when Chernobyl exploded was approximately 400 times that of the radiation contamination at Hiroshima.

As you'd imagine, the range and power of any potential meltdown is a bit of a hot topic and search engine poisoners are going to have a field day with users searching for information related to that one.

I asked a random person in my hotel (no really) to go looking for information related to radiation levels after telling them lots of things about contamination level comparisons. Sure enough, they came back with "Chernobyl radiation 400 times Hiroshima" and on the very first page in Google, there's a website called celebrities-with-diseases(dot)com. The title is pure clickbait: "Americans shouldn't fear radiation sickness from Fukushima".

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Hitting that link does something you've seen a million times or more by now:


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Fake warnings, fake scans, a file offered up for download.

As always, remain vigilant and ensure you're getting your information from trusted sources - you can guarantee "Celebrities with Diseases" won't be showing up in Google News anytime soon.

Christopher Boyd