Surfing for the Na’vi could give you a virus!
I don’t know about you but I loved all the glitz and the glamour of the Oscars, all those gorgeous designer dressers and of course the gorgeous A-listers themselves!
I’ve only seen one of the movies that was nominated this year – UP! – of course! Although my kids have seen Avatar, I just haven’t been able to squeeze in the 3 hours required to watch it as yet. But my kids love all things Avatar and have frequently changed my screen saver to an alien looking blue creature, which can only mean they’re on the “wild wild web” surfing for pictures, movie facts, screen savers and what ever else they can find that’s Avatar related. It’s a bit of a worry then that Avatar was rated number four on the the Top Ten Most Riskiest Academy Award Nominees list! This means that my kids (and our home computer) could be downloading much more than just the cute blue Na’vi (apparently this is the species of blue alien creatures).
In the lead up to the Oscars and now that the winners have been announced, McAfee has seen a significant increase in the popularity of Oscar nominees and winners in online searches, and the bad guys have also noticed, moving to set up dodgy sites that are linked to the names of Oscar nominees and movies. So when you’re downloading screensavers, pictures and movie info you may potentially be downloading a nasty virus!
Even a simple search on Oscar winning Best Actress Sandra Bullock means you have a 30% chance of landing on a site containing a virus.
Drum roll please….the Top Ten Most Riskiest Academy Awards Nominee’s are:
- Sandra Bullock 29.6%
- Penelope Cruz 29.3%
- Maggie Gyllenhaal 26.1%
- Avatar 23%
- An Education 19%
- Lee Daniels 19%
- Matt Damon 18.1%
- Morgan Freeman 17.2%
- Helen Mirren 16.3%
- James Cameron 15.4%
So what are Cybermum’s tips when celebrity surfing online – make sure your computer has up-to-date antivirus and use a service like Site Advisor which tells you which search results are safe and those that aren’t. Otherwise your computer may take longer to recover than a celebrity after Oscar celebrations!
Enjoy the movies!
Keep safe
Moira
