Avril Lavigne is 2017’s most dangerous celebrity, According to McAfee

McAfee, a well-known anti-virus manufacturer, recently conducted their 11th annual McAfee Most Dangerous Celebrities study and the celebrity that came on top was Avril Lavigne.

McAfee does this study to see how cybercriminals take advantage of pop culture and the fame of celebrities to lure in victims.

To conduct the study, McAfee uses their WebAdvisor site ratings to gauge the number of risky websites generated by web searches on platforms like Google, Bing, and Yahoo that included the name of a celebrity and search terms that could potentially show malicious websites.

So how did Avril top the list? Well, according to McAfee there are two factors — One is because of an internet conspiracy that the real Avril is dead and has been replaced by an impostor and two is that the pop singer announced she was working on a new album to be released by the end of 2017.

McAfee computed a risk percentage of about 22% when searching for “Avril Lavigne + free mp3” which is the riskiest way to look for Avril Lavigne content. The risk of searching for “free mp3” is also the reason why musicians dominated the company’s list this year.

It seems cybercriminals are using a consumer’s need to have the latest album or movie release from their favorite celebrities to try and scam them.

So always stay vigilant when traversing the web and searching for free content especially when it comes to famous people. If ever you fall victim to these cyber criminals here are some tips to remove malware from your PC, avoid e-mail spams, and check if your account has been compromised.

Source: McAfee