World Cup of Spyware
Posted by Shane Keats on June 14, 2006 02:00 PM
FIFA's greatest players and teams ranked by the danger of their screensaver searches
Angola may have lost in Round 1 of the World Cup of Soccer, but it's the winner of the most dangerous team in the World Cup of Spyware. That's our finding after running each of the World Cup's 736 players through our database of Web safety ratings and averaging the team roster's results.
We know that spammers and spyware vendors follow consumer trends closely, from American Idol to summer blockbusters, but those are largely U.S. phenomena. We wanted to know what level of online risk was faced by fans of a global event like the World Cup. Sadly, we were not disappointed.
How does your team rank?
We began by searching Google for each of the 736 World Cup players. Along with the player's name, we added the phrase 'World Cup Screensaver'. Then, we crossed Google's search results with SiteAdvisor's own database of safety test results of more than 3.9 million of the Web's most popular sites. The results for dozens of players yielded 30% or more risky sites. We performed the same exercise for all teams and found 11 with dangerous site percentages in the double digits.
You might be surprised how some of the teams and players ranked in our study. Want to see the full results and find out how your home team scored? Get all the details in our World Cup of Spyware Survey.
