Searches for nude starlets, online music are dangerous for your computer
Spending time trying to find pics of pop starlet Britney Spears nude on the Web could only be slightly more hazardous to your PC than searching for online music. A recent study showed that 20 per cent of sites returned when using a search engine to find Spears "nude" contained spyware or other malicious code. Nineteen per cent of searches to download music online turned up sites with similar potential computer damaging potential.
"The bad guys want to choose terms which they think are going to be popular, that a lot of people are going to be searching for," said John Aycock, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Calgary, in a report posted on the Online Computer Blog. "It's a reflection of our culture and the degree to which sex drives everything - not just the Internet."
However, not all online sex is the same. Searches for what was considered to be "adult porn" were classified as far less risky with the return rate of bad sites being only nine per cent, according to the McAfee report, which examined 2,300 popular searches. According to a June 4, 2007 Los Angeles Times story, the speculation of why porn sites are "cleaner" than online music ones is because it is harder to make a living selling tunes on the Web. Those sites might need the extra revenue that comes from programs that spew unwanted ads.
It seems only fitting that Spears once scored a hit with the song "Toxic." Trying to find her in the buff could be exactly that for your computer. As well as dangerous searches for her nude, fourteen per cent of the sites in a search for her "naked" were rated as unsafe. Even clothed she isn't safe, 10 per cent of the sites returned for a Spears search were considered risky.
Spears is not alone in being potentially dangerous to computers. At least 10 per cent of the searches for the following stars nude turned up sites that were rated unsafe: former Baywatch stars Pamela Anderson and Carmen Electra, both 15 per cent; singer/actress/reality TV star Jessica Simpson, 14 per cent; former jailed hotel heiress Paris Hilton, 12 per cent; and Fantastic Four movie star Jessica Alba, 11 per cent.
You could also stumble upon malware by searching for celebrity couples who have broken up. The most unsafe searches for Hollywood twosomes were: Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston (14 per cent), Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (12), Kenny Chesney and Renee Zellweger (11), Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie (10) and Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey (10). Of these couples only TomKat and Pitt/Jolie are still reportedly together. It seems the folks putting up dangerous sites do not stay up with the times in pop culture.
In all, only four per cent of search results linked to risky Web sites. This is an improvement from a 2006 study.
