Looking to stream “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “The Incredibles,” or other popular TV and movies during this pandemic for free? It could be risky. That’s what research from the McAfee security firm is suggesting in a new report issued on Tuesday.
McAfee revealed the top ten most targeted titles in online entertainment. And most disturbing for parents is that children’s movies accounted for four of the ten films on the movie genre targeted list, including “The Lion King,” “Aladdin,” “Frozen 2,” and the aforementioned “The Incredibles.” Perhaps none of this is surprising during a period in which the kids were home from school while mom and dad had to balance work responsibilities with child care.
Meanwhile, half of the top ten shows associated with the highest web crime risk were original series by the streaming networks, McAfee says.
“With consumers increasingly going online to stay entertained during lockdowns it has created the perfect storm for web crime,” said Baker Nanduru, vice president of consumer endpoint Segment at McAfee in a release. “History has proven that cyber criminals follow consumer trends and behaviors to educate their scam strategies.”
To come up with its “most targeted” lists, McAfee pulled the most popular TV and movie titles available on U.S. streaming sites according to “best of” articles by a range of US publications. It then analyzed web results for searches of the entertainment titles with modifying terms (e.g. TV show + torrent).
“Most targeted” refers to the number of high-risk websites associated with these entertainment titles, as resulting domains and URLs were measured and assigned a risk of “high,” “medium” and “unverified.”
So how can you protect yourself and your kids?
For starters, McAfee recommends says to be careful where you click: that is, visiting reliable sources such as Amazon or iTunes rather than downloading a “free” version from a suspicious site that could contain malware. Along these lines, McAfee advises people to refrain from turning to the illegal stream sites altogether.
Of course, McAfee also recommends turning to cybersecurity solutions to protect you against malware, phishing attacks and other threats, along with parental control measures. In other words, buy its software.
“It’s important that consumers stay alert while online and avoid malicious websites that may install malware or steal personal information and passwords,” Nanduru says.
Here are McAfee’s full top ten targeted lists:
Top 10 Web Risk List: Television – U.S.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Elite
Harlots
Letterkenny
Poldark
Lost
You
Gentefied
PEN15
Skins
Top 10 Web Risk List: Movies – U.S.
Warrior
Zombieland
The Incredibles
Step Brothers
Bad Boys
Aladdin (2019)
The Lion King (1994)
Swingers
Frozen 2
The Invitation