Angola and not Brazil has the most dangerous soccer team in the world, at least when ranked by the safety of Team Angola’s World Cup screensavers.
That’s the finding of a survey conducted by McAfee SiteAdvisor, which analyzed screensaver pages associated with World Cup teams and players.
Hot on Angola’s heels: favorites Brazil and Portugal. Among the players, superstars Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, David Beckham of England and Ronaldinho of Brazil pose significant danger to fans.
The McAfee SiteAdvisor team first searched Google for each of the 736 World Cup players, adding the phrase "World Cup Screensaver" to the search.
Then, it crossed Google’s results with SiteAdvisor’s own database of spyware and spam safety test results for more than 3.8 million of the Web’s most popular sites.
The "winners" were searches that resulted in the highest percentage of risky Web sites. For the record, Angola beat Brazil 24% to 17%, followed by Portugal, Argentina and the USA in consecutive order.
The most dangerous player to search for, meanwhile, is Luis Mamona João "Lama" from Angola, with 45% of first page results leading to questionable sites.
Fans of soccer stars like Beckham and Ronaldinho who conduct online searches for their idols face as much as a 30% chance of landing at risky Web sites.
"Soccer fans are famous for the depth of their feelings for player, club and country, but sadly, the vendors of spyware, adware and other unwanted software know how to exploit fans’ passions for financial gain," explained Chris Dixon, director of strategy for McAfee SiteAdvisor.
"This survey shows yet again that the problem of Web security has truly gone global."
McAfee found the top 10 World Cup teams with a high percentage of sites with adware, spyware and malicious downloads include:
1. Angola 24.0%
2. Brazil 17.2%
3. Portugal 16.2%
4. Argentina 13.6%
5. USA 13.0%
6. Italy 12.7%
7. Spain 11.2%
8. Netherlands 10.9%
9. Iran 10.9%
10. France 10.8%
While the top 10 players with a high percentage of sites with unwanted downloads are:
1. Lama (Angola) 45.5%
2. Christian Lara (Ecuador) 41.7%
3. Loco (Angola) 41.7%
4. Roberto Carlos (Brazil) 40.0%
5. Mateus (Angola) 38.5%
6. Fernando Torres (Spain) 36.4%
7. Raul (Spain) 36.4%
8. Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) 36.4%
9. Ronaldo (Brazil) 36.4%
10. Zé Roberto (Brazil) 36.4%
