Posted by Virus Bulletin on Sep 13, 2006
Celebrities bigger lure than sex, says McAfee.
A report on adware and spyware from McAfee has stated that celebrity sites, rather than those pushing pornography or other widely distrusted content, are the 'most prolific distributors of adware'. Over 16% of sites blacklisted by McAfee's SiteAdvisor web filtering software were dedicated to celebrity worship, compared to around 11% each for sites carrying screensavers and 'adult' sites.
The company has identified 450 separate adware families, and 4,000 variants, a tenfold increase over the levels seen five years ago. Among other figures included in the report, over 12 million computers worldwide are believed to be compromised and in use as part of a botnet, and 97% of people in a survey could not spot an unsafe site.
The full report is apparently available somewhere on the McAfee website, here.
Posted on 13 September 2006 by Virus Bulletin
