Popular internet search terms are invariably the target of spammers, hackers, phishermen and worm spreaders, with similar or look-alike sites or pages being set up to try and catch the unwary.
These ‘dodgy’ sites may contain trojans, worms, malaware or other unwanted items.
The most popular targets for these cybervillains change quite frequently. Last year it was ‘Brad Pitt’ who was at the top of the ‘hitlist’, but he has dropped down to number ten and the new number one is ‘Jessica Biel’.
Apparently, if you were to Google ‘Jessica Biel’ (in the best possible taste, of course), you would have a one in five chance of ending up on a site containing some sort of online threat such as spyware, phishing, viruses, trojans or spam.
The current top ten are:
- Jessica Biel
- Beyonce (and in particular Beyonce ringtones)
- Jennifer Aniston (and in particular Jennifer Aniston screensavers)
- Tom Brady
- Jessica Simpson
- Gisele Bundchen (Who?)
- Miley Cyrus
- Megan Fox
- Angeline Jolie
- Brad Pitt
There are, fortunately, many pieces of software out there to flag potentially dangerous or suspicious sites, and many of them are free, such as McAfee SiteAdvisor.