Are people in Qatar more exposed to online attacks than the rest of the world?
In response to this question, we studied 2,000 most visited sites of October 2014 in Qatar and the world. Using the analytical service providers Alexa Top Sites, Similar Web, Web of Trust and Virus Total, we were able to extract, classify and study them.
Click below to view our findings expressed in a visual storytelling.
According to Web of Trust's reputation system, websites browsed in Qatar are less trusted than those browsed in the rest of the world. Reputations are based on ratings received from users and third-party sources on how trustworthy a website is. Reputations are further supported by a negative, questionable, neutral or positive explanation. One site can have multiple explanations. A negative explanation means the website is subject to cyber attacks. For our analysis, we only consider reputations and explanations when user confidence is greater or equal to 10% as suggested by Web of Trust.
$$ { poor \ reputation \ \% = {count \ of \ poor \ sites \over total \ classified \ sites} } \qquad \qquad for \ confidence \ge 10% $$
How to read these charts the first chart compares reputations in Qatar and the world, the second provides an explanation to the suggested reputations. The charts do not include excellent reputation (% for Qatar, % for the world) and positive explanation (% for Qatar, % for the world).
| Classification | Description |
|---|---|
| Negative | Malware, Viruses, Phishing, Scam |
| Questionable | Suspicious, Unethical, Hate, Spam, Ads, Privacy risks, Potentially illegal, Other |
| Neutral | Online tracking, Alternative or controversial medicine, Opinions, religion or politics |
According to Web of Trust and Virus Total, users in Qatar browse more malicious sites, therefore are more likely to become victims of online attacks than the rest of the world. Summary numbers only consider websites subject to malware, virus, phishing or scam attacks. Web of Trust and Virus Total agree 0% of the time on marking a site malicious or safe. We also consider the percentage of users affected by malicious sites using Alexa reach, aka traffic.
$$ { affected \ users \ \% = { \sum user \ traffic \ of \ malicious \ sites \qquad\qquad \over total \ user \ traffic \qquad\qquad } } $$
How to read this chart maroon bars represent number of sites browsed in Qatar, blue those browsed in the world. The hashed section shows sites common to both Qatar and the world. Classifications are not mutually exclusive, which means that a site can be both malicious and unethical.
Qatar is 0 times more exposed to cyber attacks than the rest of the world.
TRAFFIC*According to Virus Total where positives is greater than 2. The remaining classifications are according to Web of Trust.
According to Freegeoip and Alexa reach, malicious sites that are browsed in Qatar are mainly located in North America and Western Europe.
How to read this map malicious websites hosted in the USA affect 5.7% of Qatar's online users.
According to Alexa's ranking and Similar Web's categorization, Qatar's population is more interested in media, news, beauty, health and finance than the rest of the world. Alexa ranking is calculated based on the reach—number of users visiting a site—and page views—number of times a site is visited—recorded from users who have the Alexa browser extension. If a user visits the same site multiple times on the same day, these visits will be counted as one. Similar Web categorization uses a learning algorithm to classify websites using content tags, similarity results and a learning set of 2.5M categorized websites.
$$ { category \ ranking = {\sum ranking \ of \ sites \in \ category \qquad \over count \ of \ sites \in \ category \qquad} } $$
How to read this graph the higher the category, the more interested is the user community in this category.
Qatar and World categories are linked to help you track the change in interest.
$$ { subcategory \ share = { \sum traffic \ of \ malicious \ sites \in \ subcategory \qquad\qquad \over total \ traffic \qquad\qquad } } $$
$$ { keyword \ size = { \sum number \ of \ times \ keyword \ is \ searched \ to \ access \ malicious \ sites } } $$
social referals
$$ { social \ medium \ size = { \sum times \ site \ is \ shared \ via \ medium \times site \ traffic \qquad\qquad \over total \ traffic \qquad\qquad } \qquad\qquad for \ all \ malicious \ sites } $$