Firefox plug-in released to battle SEO scams

Web security firm Zscaler has released a free Firefox add-on designed to protect users against black hat search engine optimization (SEO), a tactic cybercriminals use to get their malicious links to appear at or near the top of search results. The add-on works by changing the referrer string of a visitor so that a malicious site is unable to tell if the user surfed in via a search engine, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo, the company said in a blog post Friday. Typically SEO sites direct users to malicious pages, such as fake anti-virus sites, if they detect a search referral URL. — DK