The Knight and Day star is the top celebrity used as bait by scammers, warned security firm McAfee.
2010 top three celebrities list are Cameron Diaz, Julia Roberts, and Jessica Biel, McAfee said. The other most-dangerous celebrities to look for online are Gisele Bundchen, Brad Pitt, Adriana Lima, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, Heidi Klum, Penelope Cruz and Anna Paquin.
Searching for Cameron Diaz online gives you a one in 10 chance of landing on a risky site. If someone searched for Cameron Diaz pictures, about 19 percent of the sites that popped up contained malicious downloads.
Dave Marcus, director of security research at McAfee Labs stated: Creators of malicious software use celebrities as lures, baiting fans and followers to click on and download seemingly inoffensive content containing programs planned to steal passwords and other private information for profit.
scammers are now beating malicious content in tiny places like shortened URLs that can extend virally in social networking sites and Twitter, instead of on websites.
A lot of times a cyber criminal will dig for Twitter, or follow Google Trends, to poison those kinds of links. But it's very clear they will use news trends to bait," Marcus said.
Dave Marcus, director of security research at McAfee Labs stated: Creators of malicious software use celebrities as lures, baiting fans and followers to click on and download seemingly inoffensive content containing programs planned to steal passwords and other private information for profit.
scammers are now beating malicious content in tiny places like shortened URLs that can extend virally in social networking sites and Twitter, instead of on websites.
A lot of times a cyber criminal will dig for Twitter, or follow Google Trends, to poison those kinds of links. But it's very clear they will use news trends to bait," Marcus said.
"Brad Pitt is previously one of the most dangerous celebrities to search on," said Marcus. He's always up there. This is the fourth time McAfee published the annual list of dangerous persons.
The overall study used McAfee's Site Advisor ratings to track risky sources of celebrity content on the web, and used these results to calculate an overall risk percentage.
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