Can INDIAs 10 MOST DANGEROUS CELEBRITIES list be surrogate for popularity?

By | 18/06/2017

The seemingly hot looking women could lead to disastrous results. This learning was reinforced last week. I discovered ‘THE MOST DANGEROUS CELEBRITY’ list. Curious, I opened it to be better educated. It is interesting how things get interpreted.

McAfee, yeah those computer safety guys officially release ‘ MOST DANEGROUS CELEBRITY LIST’ every year. These are the riskiest celebrity sportsmen, actors and politicians across the web.




They get on to the list not by choice, but cyber criminals use them to get the unsuspecting gullible Internet users to websites with malicious software. They are the bait and never the prize. The ranking reflects the % of malicious software leaden sites using the celebrity.

I see it as an interesting surrogate reflecting success and fan following or even HOT QUOTIENT or desirability. Cyber criminals are smart they follow the latest fad. They leverage people’s fascination with the celebrities. They hook on to the desire of Internet user to be up close to the celebrity and have them as part of his or her virtual life.

The 2016 India list of MOST DANGEROUS CELEBRITIES is topped by Sonakshi replacing Priyanka Chopra, who topped the list in 2015

These sites set up the bait. The malicious software gets ready to load as you type in the search window. The tags like the celebrity names with strings like ‘hot pictures, ‘sexy’, ‘Sex video’, ‘screen savers , ‘Nude Pictures’and ‘free downloads’ gives you a high probability of getting infected.

McAfee is in business of cyber safety and protecting. Use f their product or services ensure you safely continue to do the dangerous searching and surfing with confidence. The MOST DANGEROUS CELEBRITY LIST, which is available on a Global and country basis. It is a great IP event, not yet fully exploited.

Not much of a surprise that Sunny Leone, Katrina Kaif and Priyanak Chopra, all of them has topped this list at different times during their career. Once you place the annual list in an chronological order, the observations you can make are more than interesting.

It is a good indicative list. It is based on Intel Security study using McAfee® WebAdvisor site ratings to determine the number of risky sites generated by searches, on Google*, Bing* and Yahoo!*, that included a celebrity name and commonly searched terms (noted below) likely to yield malware.



The annual release keeps the hype and interest. 10 seem a good number as the list goes, and anyway they are not in a calendar business to take the list to 12. Temptation to do a monthly list would always be there.

International list has more than the actors. It has been dominated by comedians like Amy Schumer, Chris Hardwick, Daniel Tosh, Nikki Glaser and Kevin Hart, Musicians like Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez Kesha, Drake, Katy Perry, Jason Aldean, Justin Timberlake, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé.

For this to happen in India, we will need more than solving the issue of data accessibility, affordability and availability. I can’t see Arijeet, Abhijeet, Sonu Nigam or lata and Asha in the list. I think that the list of 2017 will find Parineeti and Kangana Ranaut in the list.

We also have one year, where the list was dominated by men. That seems to be a exception. It is women who populate and dominate the list. And we know the reason, why.

THREE OBSERVATIONS

If you now go ahead and check for McAfee, Most Dangerous Celebrities India lists. It would seem that the list was only released in 2015 when Priyanka Chopra topped it. Was this a PR clouding of the search as the 2016 list ( latest list) one has to drill down the pages to realize Sonakshi Sinha topped it!

In Global list, there is one celebrity at every rank. In the Indian list, there are cases when two celebrities have been ranked the same and in 2015 Deepika, Emraan and Sunny all were ranked 7th. Is this a real result or again someone working behind the scenes to ensure to accommodate more than 10 on the list?

At the best the list can be surrogate of the desirability quotient among people making  a particular kind of search. It can be taken as a directional indication towards their appeal but thats where it must stop.

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As a BONUS on this post, let me share some quick tips from McAfee to avoid catching the computer virus or malicious software loaded on your screens. u Think before you click! And get your content directly from the original source u Avoid searching for “torrent.”, it is the riskiest term on net. u Keep your personal information personal. Just don’t share it u off course Browse safely using protection like McAfee® WebAdvisor software. u Use cross device protection. These are solutions that work across all your devices to deliver protection against threats, such as virus, malware, hacking and phishing attacks.

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