Don’t Fry You Computer on a Stewart and Pattinson Story

TY to Josh for pointing this out to us. New stories that are film related seem to currently pose no threat. However items regarding the actors’ personal lives are causing an issue according to one expert.

We’ve seen this kind of thing before. Usually around the time each movie comes out people will end up with their computers destroyed by searching on “free Twilight movie”. the links are almost always a scam laden with viruses. Well, it seems in light of recent news, the spammers are finding a new trick. it’s also important because with Twitter short links you don’t always know where you’re being directed to.

According to Fox:

Furthermore, rogue attackers are constantly coming up with new ways to trick users, generating fake news stories containing scareware to appear in top search results. So if you spot a Stewart scandal-related story that is just too juicy to be true, and you aren’t familiar with the source, odds are it is hazardous to your computer’s health.

Unfortunately, unlike 2010, when you could usually see the URL to which you were being directed, the current proliferation of microblogging sites like Twitter makes it harder to detect the origin of the links, raising your chance of infection.

“The bigger the risk with celebrity scams is that you will receive tiny URLs links to stories on Twitter and on Facebook … so they can ‘clickjack’ you,” Gregg said.

See more on Fox

In the interest of keeping your computers in one piece, if you are following the personal lives of the actors, we’d recommend staying with places like MTV, E!, EW, Access Hollywood, People, and TMZ. They are virus free and generally have a fairly good basis in fact rather than wild and unsubstantiated speculation.

Again, news stories related to film content seem to be OK, but use common sense. If you’ve heard of the site it’s probably fine. If it’s a site you’ve never heard of, what’s the likelihood they have a scoop.