Nude Britney on net more toxic than Paris Hilton

WASHINGTON: Surfing the net for nude pictures of Britney Spears can be riskier than searching for pics of Paris Hilton in the buff, not because you’ll find more loads of shocking pics or information about the singer, but because sites offering such a sight are more likely to infect your PC with a virus.

The finding has been based on a study conducted by McAfee's SiteAdvisor group, which evaluates the risks associated with approximately 2,300 of the most popular search terms based on the sites they return.

According to the online search conducted, McAfee found that searching for Britney in the buff can put you at risk of coming across a very high percentage of sites riddled with spyware and other malicious code than a search for a naked Paris Hilton.

However, more dangerous in this category than Paris, was found to be Celeb couple Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.

Mark Maxwell, a senior product manager for SiteAdvisor, told E! Online the number of risky sites turned up by a search for a given star was not "necessarily an attribute of the celebrities themselves".

He said the risk of viruses happens because legitimate websites tend to "age out" their coverage of less relevant topics, such as information on Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.

This means that people searching for information about the couple were more likely to stumble upon sites run by less scrupulous operators, than if they tried to search for information about Pitt and current lady love Angelina Jolie.

"Are Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston truly riskier than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as people? No," Maxwell said.