A thorough survey conducted by an information security company found one of ten online searches for Cameron Diaz brings up a malware. In second place is Julia Roberts and fifth – Brad Pitt.

The explanation: the ‘bad” guy read the same news read by the ‘good’ guys

Cameron Diaz is the most dangerous online celebrity for 2010 – according to McAfee information security company. According to Dave Marcus a senior executive in McAfee Apparently one out of ten searches executed online for Cameron will yield a malware. “If you search for a Cameron screen saver this probability doubles”, he warns.

Apparently the search for celebs online has become too dangerous in recent years and three years ago McAfee began tracking words and terms associated with professional athletes, movie stars, politicians and news anchors. The research includes performing searches and tagging the results according to their threat level to the user. Suspicious websites including malicious softwares are counted and a statistical comparison is held between celebrities to see who is most dangerous to search for. The results are updated in a free software issued by McAfee called SiteAdvisor, whose function is to help the user categorize search results as more or less dangerous.

The crooks use famous peoples names and events associated with them, to attract innocent users into clicking on links, email, facebook posts or twits on Twitter. Clicking the link will download a program that enables them to control the computer and execute different actions starting with planting a virus to searching user details: user names and passwords to various services he subscribes to, credit card details or intimate content to publish online.

The most dangerous celebs are also the most popular ones

As mentioned above, Cameron Diaz took the number one spot this year, dethroning Jessica Beal who dropped down to third place on the list. Second place was taken by Julia Roberts and fourth by Giselle. The fifth place was taken by the man of Hollywood – Brad Pitt.”The bad guys read the same news read by the good guys”, says Marcus and this is the reason the ranking is identical, more or less, to the popularity ranking of celebs online.

So next time you click on a link that leads to a page with a promise from president Obama, don’t be surprised if your computer starts working slowly. Or maybe its just better if you don’t click; most likely what he has to say will not be hidden on a special page.