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Emma Watson Is the Internet’s Riskiest Click

If your internet activities involve searching for Harry Potter star Emma Watson (and let’s be honest, they probably do), you might want to be extra careful about which links you click. That̵...
Emma Watson Is the Internet’s Riskiest Click
Written by Josh Wolford
  • If your internet activities involve searching for Harry Potter star Emma Watson (and let’s be honest, they probably do), you might want to be extra careful about which links you click.

    That’s because the 22-year-old actress is officially the riskiest click online, in terms of malicious materials.

    The news comes to us from virus protection company McAfee, who have conducted the study six times now. Last year, Heidi Klum come out on top as the most dangerous celebrity to search for. Of course, when we say “dangerous,” we’re referring to the likelihood that a site is malicious (malware, phishing, etc.).

    McAfee says that malicious site owners use Emma Watson’s name more than any other celebrity to draw internet users to their properties.

    Here’s the staggering proportion: 1 in 8. That’s the chance you have of winding up on a malicious site while searching for Emma Watson.

    Unsurprisingly, female celebrities tend to be the riskier search terms. Other dangerous searches this year include Jessica Biel, Selena Gomez, and Halle Berry. There was only one dude on the top 20 most-dangerous list, and strangely enough that male celeb was Jimmy Kimmel (coming in at #13).

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    “In today’s celebrity culture, consumers expect to be able to go online to catch up with the latest photos, videos, tweets, and stories about their favorite celebrities. Due to the richness of the data and the high interaction, often times consumers forget the risks that they are taking by clicking on the links,” said Paula Greve, director of web security research at McAfee. “As the sophistication and expectations of consumers with respect to their online experience has increased, so has the level and ability to deliver malware either by malvertising, exploiting the user’s browser without their awareness, or masking malicious URLs behind shortened URLs.”

    Earlier today, McAfee conducted a poll on their Facebook page ahead of these results. They asked users which celebrity they thought was the riskiest click. Selena Gomez and Kim Kardashian won the vote, so apparently people don’t expect little old Emma Watson to be the bearer of bad sites.

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    [Image via Facebook]

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