It's far from an Oscar, but landing atop McAfee's annual list carries a distinction all its own: It means that criminals believe those celebs are the perfect lures to sucker people into visiting malicious websites.
Clicking onto strange sites is sketchy to begin with. But many people do, and their computers get infected. Once a computer is infected, criminals can steal victims' online banking passwords, e-mail passwords, and do other kinds of nasty deeds. Attaching famous people's names to malicious sites is a well-worn ruse, to fool people looking at search results into thinking they're heading to a legitimate site.
The other most-dangerous celebrities to look for online, according to McAfee, are Gisele Bundchen, Brad Pitt, Adriana Lima, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, Heidi Klum, Penelope Cruz and Anna Paquin. McAfee performed its tests in July using the company's technology for identifying dangerous websites. The rankings measure the likelihood that someone looking for things such as photos and videos of those celebrities would land on a malicious site.
