Looking for Free Downloads Online? Beware Robert DeNiro
When you download a song, game, or book, are you keeping it legal? If not, bad actors may take advantage of your need for instant gratification by sliding malware into content you think is safe.
In an analysis of search results for pop culture favorites alongside terms like MP3, torrent, download, or stream, Surfshark finds that the most "dangerous" actor on the internet is none other than American treasure Robert DeNiro. Approximately 54.1% of piracy-related search results for his name included potential malware.
Surfshark started with massive lists of top pop-culture searches across several categories, including actors, musicians, TV shows, movies, songs, sports teams, anime, and books. It then sourced the lists from various places—musical artists were supplied by Billboard, for example.
After conducting searches with the piracy-related terms included, Surfshark ran every URL that came back in the first few pages of Google results through website-security-checker Sucuri. The percentages are the number of URLs that received a "medium risk" rating from the site.
Beyond DeNiro, other actors with dangerous web presences include Jake Gyllenhaal, Anthony Hopkins, and Tom Hanks. Kate Winslet at 52.6% is the most dangerous of the female actors, followed by Margot Robbie, Rachel McAdams, and Sandra Bullock. For musicians, Billie Eilish (47.1%) is on top of the list, then The Weeknd, Eminem, and Justin Bieber.
As for video, Pixar's Finding Dory at 46.7% turns out to be the most malware-ridden movie, Breaking Bad (39.6%) for TV, Yowamushi Pedal (49.7%) for anime, The Lovely Bones (49%) for books, the song "Industry Baby" by Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow is 50.8%; and for games, it's Mortal Kombat 11 at 46.5%.
You can read the full
Read more on pcmag.com
