New Delhi: American global cyber security software company, McAfee, has conducted research and released a list of most dangerous celebrities from across the world. Global football sensation Cristiano Ronaldo topped the McAfee’s Most Dangerous Celebrity list 2020.
McAfee’s 2020 List Of Most Dangerous Indian Celebs
According to the list released by McAfee, Bollywood stars Tabu, Taapsee Pannu, Anushka Sharma and Sonakshi Sinha are among the top 10 personalities generating the riskiest search results online in India owing to the malicious sites and viruses linked to their names.
With only Ronaldo representing sports, the 14th edition of the McAfee’s Most Dangerous Celebrity list 2020 is dominated by the names from showbiz.
- Tabu
- Tapsee Pannu
- Anushka Sharma
- Sonakshi Sinha
- Armaan Malik
- Sara Ali Khan
- Divyaka Tripathi
- Shah Rukh Khan
- Arijit Singh
Reason
In 2020, owing to the COVID-19 induced lockdown, Indians have been particularly active online, increasing their usage across many devices and scouring the internet for a wide variety of entertainment. Amid this lockdown, people turned to digital media to entertain themselves with free movies and TV shows to the latest celebrity news and gossip.
This is one huge advantage to online hackers, who too, honed-in on this trend to execute their scam strategies.
Venkat Krishnapur, vice president of Engineering and managing director, McAfee India, said as consumers scout the web for free entertainment now more than ever, cybercriminals trail close behind, capitalising on this interest.
What ‘Most Dangerous Celebrity’ means?
“Unsuspecting users often look for free and pirated content such as major sports events, movies, TV shows, along with images and leaked videos of their favourite celebs. Bad actors (cybercriminals) leverage consumers’ fascination with pop culture and drive unsuspecting fans to malicious websites that install malware on their devices, potentially putting personal information at risk,” Krishnapur said in a statement.
McAfee’s suggestion
In order to evade these harmful links, McAfee suggests that users should refrain from visiting third party websites that could contain malware, illegal streaming websites. Also, users should not download mp3 files, those often contain malware.