If you like keeping tabs on actress Cameron Diaz, you may be better off sticking to People magazine and Access Hollywood rather than Googling her. A report from security vendor McAfee says the actress is this year’s number-one celebrity whose search results are likely to infect your computer.
The Charlie’s Angels star, who turns 38 next week, edged out Eat Pray Love star Julia Roberts and Jessica Biel, last year’s winner of the dubious distinction, in McAfee’s fourth annual analysis.
Cruising for Trouble
Other suspicious-search stars include supermodel Gisele Bundchen at fourth, followed by Inglourious Basterds squad leader Brad Pitt and Brazilian model Adriana Lima. CBS TV’s Ghost Whisperer star Jennifer Love-Hewitt and actress Nicole Kidman tied for seventh.
Searching for Kidman’s ex-husband, actor Tom Cruise, could also be considered risky business: The star ranked eighth, while model Heidi Klum and Oscar-winner Penelope Cruz tied for ninth. HBO’s True Blood star Anna Paquin was last on the list.
Searching for Diaz, whose most recent film was Knight and Day, will yield a 10 percent chance of reaching a site that loads malware onto your computer. The risk increased to 19 percent when searching for “Cameron Diaz and screensavers,” McAfee said.
“This year, the search results for celebrities are safer than they’ve been in previous years, but there are still dangers when searching online,” said Dave Marcus, security researcher for McAfee Labs. “Through consumer education and tools … consumers are getting smarter about searching online, yet cybercriminals are getting sneakier in their techniques. Now they’re hiding malicious content in ‘tiny’ places like shortened URLs that can spread virally in social-networking sites and Twitter, instead of on web sites and downloads.”
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