Her obsession with celebrities helps scammers to spread spam

Internet fraudsters do virtually anything to gain a foothold on their home computer or mobile device, whether it's a co-worker, creating fake websites for real products to steal credit card information, or issuing malware as a legitimate app. One of their most tried-and-true tricks, though not particularly sophisticated, is highly effective and includes promising nudes or free episodes of shows and films of today's top Hollywood talent.

According to a recent study by security firm McAfee, Alexis Bledel, the star of Gilmore Girls and Handmaid, was voted the most dangerous celebrity in 2019, as these famous characters searched for her on the Internet (and the news of a restart of Gilmore Girls) this year than any other celebrity.

"We rely on our web reputation tool WebAdvisor, which looks at 16 billion Web sites," said Gary Davis, McAfee consumer safety chief, to Engadget. This Windows browser plug-in prevents users from entering URLs incorrectly and blocks access to phishing and spam sites if the user accidentally clicks on a broken link and redirects to safer URLs.

McAfee examines different categories to identify the most dangerous celebrity. "We take the celebrity name with a popular search term that could expose it to a malicious site such as torrents, pirate streaming sites, etc.," Davis said. "'Free' has been a great success because when you look at the top 10 this year, many of these [celebrities] appear on paid services, and those results are then ranked based on the results of our web reputation tool."

In particular, McAfee used the search terms Torrent, Fix Gamble, Free mp3, Nudes, Pirated Download, Sledging and Streaming. Along with the name of the celebrity, the company searched the Internet for matches and searched for popular mobile, PC, and platform games using the Google API Console. McAfee's WebAdviser tool then generated a rating for each domain and URL based on the relative risk to visitors on a scale of -127 to 127, with higher ratings indicating a higher risk. The search for Bledel scored 10.6 points, more than any other celebrity polled.
Better Living Through Entertainment.
In fact, Bledel defeated Late Late Show presenter James Corden, Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner, Pitch Perfect lead actress Anna Kendrick and Lupita Nyong'o, who starred in Us and Little Monsters this year. All of these shows and movies are currently available on one or more streaming services, such as Hulu or HBO. But the people are cheap. Given the prospect of free premium content, the potential dangers of virus infections on the home computer or mobile device can be easily eliminated.

Nothing Works Better Than a Reforbes

Of course, not every website is equally dangerous. When you search YouTube for Gilmore Girls clips, you are generally aware. However, if you click on links in the comments sections of these videos that promise access to full episodes or nude images of featured stars, it can be difficult.
"Clicking on this link takes you to a different location, which takes you to the nastier sites," Davis said. "But for YouTube alone, your chances of finding something bad are not very high." The malware encountered on these sites ranges from traditional keyloggers, rootkits, and backdoors to less useful bot programs that are dormant in your system until they are remotely deployable for use with distributed denial-of-service attacks to be activated .

Fortunately, these types of scams are rarely targeted at large or small businesses. "Just because you're not naturally looking for nude pictures of celebrities from your workplace," Davis continued. The whole modern society sincerely hopes that you will not do that either.

While McAfee did not have a demographic breakdown of the types of people looking for this illegal material, Davis points out that children and adolescents are often covered by these programs. This is not necessarily because they are intentionally looking for racy images of famous people, but because they may not have access to the paid streaming service that the content originally came from, and feel that it is a stream ( at least, what they think is it) their only recourse. Davis recommends that parents, guardians, and caregivers get together with their young relatives and explain the need for proper "online hygiene."

But that's just a start. Users should also make sure that both their desktop and mobile operating systems are patched with the latest updates. Enable the built-in antivirus and firewall of your operating system. Windows Defender. If you think you need a more robust online security solution, you can sign up for a subscription-based service like Norton 360. Also have a copy of Malwarebytes ready. This on-demand malware removal tool can be invaluable if you ever slip and infect your system.

You should also use a VPN service to block your Internet traffic - never transmit over an open Wi-Fi connection - and select a password manager such as 1Password or LastPass so you do not reuse the same credentials on every Web site you visit Your entire online ecosystem compromises if this password is compromised. However, the simplest and most cost-effective anti-malware method you can use is a bit of common sense.