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Oops! Rick Perry searches are popular, plentiful and .potentially harmful?

15
Nov
2011

During the Republican Presidential Debate on November 9. 2011, Rick Perry’s speech garnered plenty of attention — but probably not the kind he sought.

Social Media has popularized this YouTube video, with the number of views skyrocketing to 1.7 million in just two days, thereby making it a new member of the Viral Video category as well as a popular search topic. 

Malware and spam attacks are commonly found surrounding popular Internet searches.

Trending searches such as the passing of Amy Winehouse and the Oslo Bombing as well as the rumors of Gaddafi‘s death, generated spam attacks in a short time span. 

Websense researchers found, based on “Rick Perry”-associated search terms, 206 unique URLs containing malicious and potentially harmful content.

Here are a few of these. 

On another note, here are some interesting statistics on bandwidth and potential productivity loss surrounding Rick Perry’s debate performance:

The amount of time spent viewing this video accounts for 1,078 days, or 2.95 years. That is a staggering amount of time, considering it took only two days. 

Streaming media may be a bandwidth concern for companies; the amount of views of this video equals to 167 gigabytes of bandwidth. 

Popularity can quickly become a curse. One minute you are rising in charts on YouTube, the next your name is regrettably associated with malicious content. 

Websense R customers are protected from the dangers of these sites by ACE, our Advanced Classification Engine.

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