he Internet is a powerful tool for business. We all know that. Millions of workers everyday head to the World Wide Web to undertake job-related re search to better themselves and their chosen compa nies.

Um ... should your company-related ... er ... research (yeah, research) involve images of Jessica Biel - it's for a Power Point presentation, right, dress it up a little bit. Copyright? What's a copyright - beware that you may get more than you bargained for, and so might the folks who take care of your computer network.

McAfee, which is a leading compu ter-virus-fighting software company, recently released its third annual list of the "most dangerous celebrities" on the Internet. Every one of the celeb rities is innocent of any malfeasance. Their only "problem" is that they are so popular that computer hackers, virus developers and spyware purveyors are using the stars' popularity to grab hold of others' computers.

If one looks for an image of actress Biel, one might find his computer beset by something that will take some effort to eradicate, or else (and hopefully) the cor porate firewall will absorb the hit and no one will be any the worse for wear.

The "dangerous celebrity list" is kind of an Internet zeitgeist, an indication of what (and who's) hot at the moment - hot enough to draw the attention of those who tread on the Net's dark side.

McAfee maintains that there's a 20 percent chance - one in five - that a search for an image

of Biel will lead, instead, to something that you don't want your computer to have.

Rounding out the top five for the year are Beyonce, Jennifer Aniston, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and Jessica Simpson.

Also unsafe are names like Miley Cyrus, Gisele Bun dchen, Megan Fox and Angelina Jolie (oh, why, God, why?) who are listed together in eighth place, Brad Pitt and Britney Spears.

We had to take a look back, of course. Our legitimate Internet research led us to the 2008 "most dangerous list," whose top 5 were Pitt, Beyonce and three people who didn't even make the 2009 list: Justin Timberlake, Heidi Montag and Mariah Carey.

What's interesting is that Biel doesn't appear any where on the 2008 list. She's been a legitimate star for some years now (and, we're certain, a subject of Internet searches) but for some reason her star has risen dramat ically, at least among Internet bad guys, in the last year.We weren't immediately able to dredge up the 2007 full list, but we've found that it was topped by Paris Hilton. That's no surprise; 2007 was roughly the zenith of the celebrity (what, party-goer, heiress, dog-owner?) That she didn't make the 2009 list we view as a bright ray of hope for the future of mankind.

If you want "safe" Internet searches, well, you might stick to politics, and in particular the first family. Searches for President Barack Obama and wife Mi chelle ranked 34th and 39th on McAfee's danger list, re spectively.

Just remember: It's research; all for a good cause. Even if it is Jessica Biel.