Hollywood actor Brad Pitt has bumped Paris Hilton off the top of the list as the most dangerous celebrity to search for on the Web, according to McAfee researchers. Altogether, fans surfing the Web for “Brad Pitt,” “Brad Pitt downloads,” and Brad Pitt wallpaper for items like screen savers and images have an 18 percent chance of becoming infected with online security threats such as spyware, spam, phishing, adware and viruses. McAfee researchers found that when a search was conducted for “Brad Pitt screensavers,” more than half the resulting Websites were identified as malicious, containing spyware, adware and viruses.
“Brad Pitt” Web pages were followed by those of singer Justin Timberlake for riskiest male celebrity search subject on the Internet. Meanwhile, Beyonce and Heidi Montag topped the list for most dangerous female celebrity. Visitors entering Beyonce ringtones into a search engine often are directed to risky Web sites that promote fake offers to gather users’ personal data. A search for “The Hills” star Heidi Montag elicits numerous Web sites offering wallpaper downloads infused with malware.
Malicious sites with Brad Pitt replaced those featuring Hollywood socialite Paris Hilton, who headed McAfee’s 2007 list of most dangerous celebrities. Neither Hilton nor pop singer Britney Spears — ranked fourth last year — made the 2008 most risky celebrity to search for on the Web. Malware generally encompasses any malicious code, including viruses, worms, spyware and Trojans, which are often silently installed on users’ PCs unbeknownst to them. Reasons for planting malware with celebrity lures range from promoting a spam product to more insidious objectives such as stealing passwords or financial and personally identifying information.
Source: CRN
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