McAfee names Priyanka Chopra as India's Most Dangerous Celebrity

Bollywood’s reigning actress turned ‘Exotic’ singer, Priyanka Chopra has been named McAfee's Most Dangerous Celebrity in Indian cyberspace this year (using co.in search engine). Priyanka knocks Sunny Leone, who topped the list last year to take this year’s title.

McAfee researched popular culture’s most famous people to reveal riskiest celebrity sportsmen, actors and politicians across the web and unveil the 2013 rendition of ‘Most Dangerous Celebrity’ research.  The study highlights the trend of cybercriminals using celebs to take advantage of fans seeking more information about their idols. Cybercriminals often lure unsuspecting supporters to sites laden with malware that can steal passwords and personal information. These criminals capitalize on the public’s fascination with celebrity to lure them to sites laden with malware that enables them to steal passwords and personal information. This year, searching for a celebrity name coupled with the search terms ‘wall paper’, ‘videos’, ‘nude pictures’ resulted in the highest instances of malware-laden sites.

Commenting on the findings of the study, Venkatasubrahmanyam Krishnapur, Vice-President of Engineering- Consumer and Mobile, Business Group, McAfee India Centre said, “In India where celebrities are given the status of demi gods, cybercriminals often use their names to lure people to sites that actually host malicious software designed to compromise personal details and disrupt devices. By including the names of popular celebrities in a website's search tags, cyber criminals are able to direct more visitors to malicious sites where they may unwittingly sign up for spam or harmful spyware  ending up with a malware ridden devices.”

The study uses McAfee® SiteAdvisor® site ratings, which indicate which sites are risky to search when attached to celebrity names on the Web and calculate an overall risk percentage. The top 10 celebrities from this year’s Indian study with the highest percentages of risk in the Indian cyberspace are:

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