Have you seen Joaquin Phoenix's version of the Joker yet? He's crazy!

Sites offering free movie streaming are likely phishing scams, and the movie files you download for free are likely infected with malware

On the other hand, another Best Picture Oscar nominee, "Parasite," is clean, despite its name Kaspersky found no malicious "Parasite" files or streams [Anton Ivanov, a researcher at Kaspersky, said, "Online fraudsters always prey on something when it becomes a hot trend

"To avoid being duped by criminals, use legitimate streaming platforms and subscriptions so you can have a good night in front of the TV without having to worry about threats

If you are going to download a movie from an untrusted source - and we do not recommend it - make sure that a) you are running either the best anti-virus program or the best Mac anti-virus program, and b) that before opening the downloaded file said make sure it has been scanned by the anti-virus program

Kaspersky's third tip is that the file extension must be "avi, mkv, mp4, or other video format

Overall, Kaspersky researchers found "more than 20" phishing sites offering to stream at least one of the nine Best Picture Oscar nominees and 925 movie downloads containing malware

These phishing sites asked for credit card and personal information, as well as responses to a survey, but none offered a real movie at the end As for the files that are downloaded, many contain real movies, but give a little something extra as well

Kaspersky researchers found that of all nine films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, "The Joker" was the most popular among cybercriminals, with 304 malicious files named after the Gotham villain

The World War I film "1917" ranked second in this rating with 215 malicious files, and "The Irishman" was third with 179 files The Korean film "Parasite" had no malicious activity

Sometimes it is easy to tell when a free movie is a fake One Twitter account set up to promote the free streaming of "The Irishman" described Martin Scorsese's gangster film this way: "Sequel to the top imdb hit, four strangers bond amidst an apocalyptic zombie outbreak It follows four strangers who bond amidst an apocalyptic outbreak (This is the plot of Zombieland: the plot of, and probably several other films as well)

Kaspersky also studied the distribution of malicious file files over time and noticed a spike in Joker and 1917 fakes three weeks after each was released

The Irishman plummeted two weeks after its release and remained so, presumably because it soon became available on Netflix Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" rose four weeks after its release

On the flip side, films that did not feature violent white men did not appeal much The racing film "Ford vs Ferrari" generated little interest, while "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure," "A Marriage Story," and "Little Women" all remained flat