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And the award for the most dangerous A-list celebrity to search in cyberspace goes to (drum roll)...Jessica Biel! Or so says McAfee, the Internet Security company who has been tracking the most dangerous celeb searches for the past three years. In case you were wondering, Paris Hilton topped the chart in 2007 before being overtaken by Brad Pitt last year.
"Cybercriminals are star watchers too -- they latch onto popular celebrities to encourage the download of malicious software in disguise," McAfee's Jeff Green said in a statement. "Consumers' obsession with celebrity news and culture is harmless in theory, but one bad download can cause a lot of damage to a computer."
McAfee warns that cyber crooks routinely use celebrity names and images to entice surfers into their web of dirty (as in laced with spyware) screensavers, ringtones, and other popular downloads.
Other celebrities making the top 10 list include Beyonce (second), Jennifer Aniston (third, with more than 40 percent of the Google search results for "Jennifer Aniston screensavers" containing malware), Tom Brady (fourth), and Jessica Simpson (fifth).
See the full list here.
Links:
[1] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/paul_lilly
[2] http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090825/wr_nm/us_biel_life_tech
[3] http://newsroom.mcafee.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=3554
[4] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/hackers_launch_wave_celebrity_death_scares_twitter
[5] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/congress_says_p2p_dangerous_national_security_singles_out_limewire
[6] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/internet_security_20
[7] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/jessica_biel
[8] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/search
[9] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/security
[10] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/news
[11] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/login?&commentfragment=comments_top_anchor