SON SON
Visiting any adult website can compromise your computer’s security, that notion is widely bandied about, even though common sense tells us that if it was that common then surely the online that is does, 12 million people whose computer were compromised by a virus over 6 month period, one million of them were result of visiting an adult web site, of course, all 12 million infections occurred because the hapless victim either had no anti-virus protection or out of date protection, but still that one million in six months infection rate for the online porn industry does reinforce the nation that, whether on the internet or in real life, the red light district is always a hazardous part of town.
Another bit of research that found suggest that 31% of all the most dangerous web site out there contain adult content, based on a study of some 19 million site, It’s all too easy to highlight this kind of figure if you have an anti porn axe to grind, but the same survey a little later on pointed out that another 26% of the most dangerous site are software download rather than porn, and that doesn’t provoke the same sort of knee jerk reaction, warning people to stay away from software.
Understanding the endgame
One of the problem when investigating the online sex business, online security is that quite often the sex site is just endgame, there will always be rogue operators in any business sector and some of these will be serving up Trojans disguised as video codec’s or attempting drive by compromise of known JavaScript exploits, and the like, I’m even prepared to admit that the odds lean toward adult site being more likely to be used by such dodgy operators, purely on the basis of the popularity of online porn.
Look at social networking site and you’ll see that as their popularity rises, which mean their popularity among non-geek, the man of the Clap-ham omnibus becoming aware of Facebook and twitter, so instances of compromised security increase exponentially, the bigger the systems, the greater the risk of exposure, that why online porn site are often found at the ultimate destination of links sent via spam, or as malware payloads that push your browser in that direction, but my gut instinct is that this is usually done to push people towards advertising more sinister.
Some totally legit adult sites still make use of pop-up and pop-under windows, spawning the horrid things as though the were going out of fashion, thank to browser add-ons that suppress them, solely to put more advertising in front of the punters, adult advertising is the main revenue source for free porn site, which can’t rely upon subscription-based income from streaming video feeds, the unscrupulous operator will use pretty well any method to place that advertising in front of your eyes, but is that enough to qualify as a real security problem, of course isn’t, it’s more of an annoyance, unless you star link-clicking like an idiot.
Financial folly.
People feel that they’ve been scammed than those whose system have compromised by malware, and this is largely due the embarrassment factor, although it isn’t that hard to say the computer is infected with so and so Trojan, don’t know where it came from, how do I get rid of it, but where money is involved there’s no such guilt, only a feeling of stupidity and stupidity rather than scam is usually what is turns out to be, I must warn anyone who signs up for a monthly online subscription to any service, but in particular to an adult content one to check the terms and condition before signing on the virtual dotted line, all too often a monthly fee will be billed as a recurring payment on your credit card, and is quite plainly describe as such in those TS&CS.
The trouble is that people tend to confuse these with bank direct debit schemes and imagine that canceling them is just a matter of quick call or email to your bank, unfortunately, such recurring payment, can be stopped only by the person who’s on the receiving end of the money, embarrassment again comes into play and people will often decide to leave their monthly payment running, if it was for some adult service, rather than have to telephone a real human being to ask them to stop it.
According to moneysavingexpert.com these are dangerous payment methods and cancel them it recommends contacting the company involved and notifying them that you intend to dispute the transaction, in the hope that they’ll give up at that point, if they don’t contact your credit card company and dispute that you authorized the transaction as they’re obliged to investigate unauthorized ones, as a last resort you can play the financial ombudsman card or at least threaten to do so, which will often spur the credit card company into making the cancellation.
So where has this lightning tour of the strange world of online sex and security got us?, there’s no doubt that two are connected, but not quite so joined at the hip as some would have you believe, anyone who sneaks a quick peek at a pornographic peepshow isn’t necessarily going to end up with a compromised system and suffer identify theft, but nor is there any guarantee against that worst case scenario happening, apply the same rules of the online road as you would for any other internet activity and these security risk can be mitigated somewhat, you need a fully patched OS, fully patched applications; a secure web browser; up to date anti virus and internet security software; and hefty close of good old fashioned common sense before setting virtual foot into the online Red light district.