These Seemingly Innocent Search Terms Could Lead Kids to Malware-Filled Websites

(Credit: Home Security Heroes)

Many of us like to think we're web-savvy enough to know when something is fishy (or phishy). Kids don’t have that same wealth of experience and web-surfing wisdom that older users have accumulated–and the bad guys know it. They’re willing to take advantage by planting malicious code on sites that your child would otherwise be innocently looking for.

That’s the finding of some research by the service Home Security Heroes. The company put together several online search queries based on things kids like, using lists like the top 100 animated movies and animated TV shows, best Halloween films, bestselling games, even favorite celebrities, all sourced from sites like Box Office Mojo, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, and even the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards nominations going back to 2019. It ran them through Google Trends to see what were the most popular, then took the extra step to run many of the search results that returned through a website security check called Sucuri SiteCheck, which is a cybersecurity firm owned by GoDaddy.

The results are worrying: Two-thirds of the pop-culture terms that Home Security Heroes tested had the potential to infect a kid’s device with malware.

Top terms that popped with the problem include Boss Baby, Beetlejuice, Pokemon, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and even big-name celebs like Anne Hathaway, Chris Hemsworth, and the queen herself, Taylor Swift. Those latter three all had over a 75% chance of being used for malware delivery.

Home Security Heroes generated several infographics with the top ten potentially dangerous search terms in each category. You can see a few below:

You can see all the rest in the full report.

Do these results mean your kid can’t ever do a search? No, but make sure they’re savvy to the downsides of the internet. You can also check things out with effective parental control software.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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