"It's sort of a little bit of rivalry from the traditional world going to the cyber world," said Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's vice president of threat research. "It's fascinating how cyber criminals can be so in tune with the popularity of various actresses and models. …They're actually a fantastic barometer of their popularity."
McAfee published the rankings of the riskiest websites every year using its free software SiteAdvisor. Its 2010 study, which McAfee has just released, found that users have a 19 percent chance of landing on a malicious site when they search the Web for "Cameron Diaz." Searching for pictures and downloads of the actress gives you a 10 percent chance of reaching a site infected with spyware, adware, spam, phishing, viruses and other cyber traps that can harm your computer or steal personal information.
Alperovitch said that even though celebrity searches were safer overall this year, searching for Diaz is even riskier than searching for Biel.
"She's been in the spotlight recently with a number of blockbuster movies, "Knight and Day," of course, with Tom Cruise," he said. "What we see is that we people who are in the news recently… they tend to be at the top of the list because they're on peoples' minds. People tend to go on Google and Bing and search for them after they've watched their movies. Cyber criminals realize that very well and target people when they do this."
The full list of the most dangerous names to search on the web is as follows:
- Cameron Diaz
- Julia Roberts
- Jessica Biel
- Gisele Bundchen
- Brad Pitt
- Adriana Lima
- Jennifer Love Hewitt, Nicole Kidman
- Tom Cruise