Beware of risky world cup screensavers

Stan Beer
Thursday, 15 June 2006 11:09

Business IT - Security

A new survey by security vendor McAfee has found that world cup soccer players Angola’s Lama, England’s Beckham and Brazil’s Ronaldinho are among players most likely to lead to risky screensaver sites. Fans of soccer superstars have in some instances a more than one in three chance of visiting a risky website.

According to McAfee, Angola has the most dangerous soccer team in the world when ranked by the safety of Team Angola’s World Cup screensavers. A survey conducted by McAfee, which analyzed screensaver pages associated with World Cup teams and players found that hot on Angola’s heels among risky screensavers were those of Brazil and Portugal. Among the players, the screensavers associated with superstars Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, David Beckham of England and Ronaldinho of Brazil pose significant danger to fans. 

The McAfee SiteAdvisor team first searched Google for each of the 736 World Cup players, adding the phrase “World Cup Screensaver” to the search.  Then, it crossed Google’s results with SiteAdvisor’s own database of spyware and spam safety test results for more than 3.8 million of the Web’s most popular sites.  The “winners” were searches that resulted in the highest percentage of risky Web sites.

Angola beat Brazil 24% to 17%, followed by Portugal, Argentina and the USA in consecutive order. The most dangerous player to search for is Luis Mamona Joao “Lama” from Angola, with 45% of first page results leading to questionable sites.  Fans of soccer stars like Beckham and Ronaldinho who conduct online searches for their idols face as much as a 30% chance of landing at risky Web sites.

“Soccer fans are famous for the depth of their feelings for player, club and country, but sadly, the vendors of spyware, adware and other unwanted software know how to exploit fans’ passions for financial gain,” explained Chris Dixon, director of strategy for McAfee SiteAdvisor.  “This survey shows yet again that the problem of Web security has truly gone global.”

McAfee found the top 10 World Cup teams with a high percentage of sites with adware, spyware and malicious downloads include:

1.    Angola        24.0%
2.    Brazil        17.2%
3.    Portugal    16.2%
4.    Argentina    13.6%
5.    USA        13.0%
6.    Italy        12.7%
7.    Spain        11.2%
8.    Netherlands    10.9%
9.    Iran        10.9%
10. France        10.8%

While the top 10 players with a high percentage of sites with unwanted downloads are:

1.    Lama (Angola)         45.5%
2.    Christian Lara    (Ecuador)    41.7%
3.    Loco (Angola)            41.7%
4.    Roberto Carlos (Brazil)    40.0%
5.    Mateus (Angola)        38.5%
6.    Fernando Torres (Spain)    36.4%
7.    Raul (Spain)            36.4%
8.    Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal)    36.4%
9.    Ronaldo (Brazil)        36.4%
10.    Ze Roberto (Brazil)        36.4%
 
To see a complete breakdown of the survey’s results, visit http://www.siteadvisor.com/surveys/worldcup_june2006.html