SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cameron Diaz has replaced Jessica Biel as the most dangerous celebrity to search for on the Web, according to security company McAfee, Inc. (NYSE:MFE). For the fourth year in a row, McAfee researched popular culture's most famous people to reveal the riskiest celebrity athletes, musicians, politicians, comedians and Hollywood stars on the Web.
"Whether you're surfing the Web from your computer or your phone or clicking on links in Twitter about your favorite celeb, you should surf safely, and make sure you're using the latest security software."
The McAfee Most Dangerous CelebritiesTM study found movie stars and models top the "most dangerous" list this year while politicians are among the safest.
Cybercriminals often use the names of popular celebrities to lure people to sites that are actually laden with malicious software. Anyone looking for the latest videos or pictures could end up with a malware-ridden computer instead of just trendy content.
"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, such as McAfee® SiteAdvisor® site ratings, 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 websites and downloads."
For more on this article visit:  Top Ten Celebrities

 

Living in a small community some of us don't bother to lock the doors to our houses but when you go on vacation or a short trip out of town you are more cautious and lock your doors, maybe even use a deadbolt.  We do the same thing with our computers.  For the most part we leave them wide open, no security and when we hear about a nasty virus we wonder if we are doing enough to protect our personal and financial information.

While Email and the Internet are still the most popular methods of malware transmissions, there are approximately 1,200 unique viruses created every day.  In December of 2008, the APWG (Anti-Phishing Working Group) recorded 31,173 sites that were linked to Phishing and password-stealing Malware. This is a jump of over 800 percent when compared to the figures from January 2008.

Twenty-five percent (25%) of newly created worms have been specifically designed to spread through USB flash drives (thumb drives) storage devices.  Most of us have had someone else's USB drives in our computer, sharing pictures, music, files, etc.  Nowadays, this means not just USB flash drives, but any device that can be attached to a computer and used as external storage, including digital cameras, external hard drives, media players, and yes even smartphones.

 

Are you protected?  Most aren't protected enough.  We proudly offer NOD32.  This company is a world leader in the industry.  It provides zero-day antivirus protection, the No. 1 rated scanning rate, award-winning detection rates and low resource utilization. When protecting a home or office computer and its valuable data is a must, NOD32 will deliver. In addition to virus scanning and cleaning, this program also cleans macro-viruses and restores documents to their original format.

 

Call Firefly today at (509) 663-7082 to make sure all your computers are protected.