Do you trust your search engine ?

No, not a question about the information Google keeps on you... Catching up on my news stories from last week I found Hackers hijack web search results - which was "a campaign to poison web searches and trick people into visiting malicious websites". The sites concerned used previously patched vulnerabilities so there's nothing to worry about if your machine is properly patched.  According to the BBC "Although the results were indexed by Yahoo and MSN the webpages were coded to only show up if someone used Google.". Puts me in mind of all those "Macs don't get viruses" people - sometimes you're more of a target when you're number one.

Last week I also got told about the "Google Joke" of going to the main page on Google, Entering "French Military Victories" and clicking I feel lucky. Open a new tab and try it before you read on (unless you are French of course. You might be offended).  Tried it ... good, because I'm going to ask you a question in a moment and you need to have tried it first. The question is this: where do you think that page came from ? I'm not going to tell you how long it took me to cotton on. The moral here ? Search engines - whether that's Google, Live, Yahoo! or whoever- give us good results which we trust. People can exploit that trust - for humour or malice.