{"id":45460,"date":"2015-09-28T22:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T05:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mcafee.com\/?p=45460"},"modified":"2025-08-31T22:40:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T05:40:05","slug":"most-dangerous-celebrities-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mcafee.com\/blogs\/internet-security\/most-dangerous-celebrities-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2015 Most Dangerous Celebrity is Putting Devices in a State of Trance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who doesn\u2019t love to search for celebrities online? From red carpet photos, to clips of the latest fashion faux pas, Hollywood gossip on the Web has a lot of us hooked. But sometimes, our interest in the stars can lead us into the digital danger zone. Cybercriminals take advantage of our interest in celebrities by riddling search results with links to sites that may host malware and other online threats that can steal personal data and harm our devices.<\/p>\n

McAfee conducted a study using McAfee\u00ae WebAdvisor<\/a> to determine the number of risky sites that would be generated in search results including a celebrity name and commonly searched terms. We refer to these stars as the Most Dangerous Celebrities\u2122<\/a>, meaning that they are likely popular search subjects. \u00a0And this year\u2019s roundup is seeing some new, surprising faces. Not so surprising is the Netherlands native who\u2019s taken our No. 1 spot, up from his No. 2 placement in 2014: world famous DJ, Armin van Buuren.<\/p>\n

So, how dangerous is it exactly to search for the trance music legend? To be precise, searching for van Buuren presents a 17.92% chance of running into online threats \u2014 if a user clicked all the results generated by the search terms. That\u2019s nearly a 1 in 5 chance of landing on a site that has \u2018malicious\u2019 written all over it.<\/p>\n

Other stars that made the cut this year include Luke Bryan (No. 2),\u00a0 Usher (No. 3), and Britney Spears (No. 4). It goes without saying that hackers have picked up on our love of music, with 7 of the top 10 Most Dangerous Celebrities this year being musical artists.<\/p>\n

What makes musicians such a focus for cybercriminals? Well, unassuming music fans tend to turn to the Web to find downloads of their favorite tunes\u2014most often in the form of .mp3 files. That said, cybercriminals might use the terms \u2018free mp3\u2019 or \u2018torrent\u2019 to entice you to download a seemingly-legitimate file that is, in reality, malicious. In the case of our No. 1 Most Dangerous Celebrity, search terms like \u201cHD download \u201cand \u201ctorrent\u201d combined with \u201cArmin van Buuren\u201d are hotbeds for hacker hoaxes.<\/p>\n

Things to Keep Yourself Safe<\/h2>\n

Cybercriminals will continue to innovate, looking for new ways to take advantage of our interest in pop culture to steal personal information. \u00a0Luckily, there are a few things you can do to keep yourself safe:<\/p>\n