The fatter the world gets, the more extreme thinness is popular on the internet, according to an analysis of nearly three million random URLs. The study revealed that websites promoting anorexia and bulimia have jumped in number since 2007.
Optenet, a global IT security company and provider of content filtering solutions, announced the results creating using their traffic analysis and classification engine for dynamic traffic, which combines artificial intelligence with traditional content filtering technology to categorize Web site and Web 2.0 content. The report tracks Internet content trends since the end of 2006, based on a random sampling of nearly three million Web sites from around the world. They found that pro-anorexia and bulimia Web sites have increased by 470 percent.
Originally founded 10 years ago as an Internet service provider dedicated to creating a safer Web experience for minors, Optenet evolved into a security vendor that provides content security technology to service providers and enterprises worldwide.
Optenet's latest project, Selecta, uses language analysis techniques and tools to automatically classify Internet content.
"Due to the rapidly increasing amount of dangerous and illicit content on the Internet, people need to take serious measures to protect their families and businesses," said Joel Silberman, vice president North America, Optenet. "It is no coincidence that pro-anorexia and bulimia sites have increased 470 percent and that personal Web pages have similarly increased 455 percent. As the Web continues to evolve from commercial to social, it is more vital than ever for parents and managers alike to categorize, monitor and control online activity."
The Optenet study showed that although pornography as a total percentage of Internet content has actually decreased slightly since 2006, it still is by far the largest category of content on the Internet, representing 35 percent of all Web sites.
Online shopping represents the second biggest category (10.5 percent), followed by travel (7 percent), advertising sites (6 percent) and sports (4.5 percent).
The entire report is available at: http://www.optenet.com/mailing/pdfs/TrendReport.pdf.
