We live in a reality where most people’s worst nightmare is for someone to see his/her search history, out of fear of being discovered using the pornographic web and mobile apps. Who would want to be busted for being a part of an online community where sensitive content is shared but still easily intruded by the traps of attackers in the cyber world?
Many who are still getting familiar with the computer and internet technology are easily tempted by the availability of adult content that can be found there but still comfort themselves thinking “I’m not so important, why would anyone try to hack me?”.
Well, it’s not about your popularity, it’s just about the fact that adult websites are bad for your security.
So, if you’re still wondering if the adult websites are bad for your security, stop. Accept the fact they are and be done with it.
Who is more exposed to security threats?
Unsurprisingly, some companies that were researching this topic of security have come to the conclusion that people who use Apple computers are far less likely to be targeted than PC users. It is equally not surprising that the motives behind the attacks are either phishing or malware. Speaking of numbers, there are more than a couple of thousand attacks by more than 30 PC malware from the Trojan families beta bot, Neverquest, and Panda aimed at searching for credentials on porn sites such as – PornHub, Brazzers, chatrubate, Xvideos, and others. We’re talking about the highest rated adult content websites known on the Internet, for a full list of them visit this website.
What is the most common privacy attacking strategy?
It does come as a surprise though, there are still those who click on banners and pop-ups that promise them a date with a half-naked blonde half a kilometer away from them, in exchange for credit card details. Meanwhile, no one is working on their password security, meaning that passwords are still weak and even less unique, so it’s no wonder that confidential information is easily extorted by phishing.
Let’s explain phishing a little more in detail. Phishing is a common name for sites that fraudulently access confidential information such as credit card numbers, user data, passwords, and so on. Banks and other companies that store such data are particularly exposed to phishing.
The most common phishing scenario is to make an identical copy of a company’s website. However, a copy is located on the phishing server and all data left by visitors is stored on the phishing server. It is often difficult to distinguish a fake site from a real one, especially when web addresses similar to the real site are used.
Hacking the sites themselves or via the advertising platforms on porn sites to redirect visitors to infected websites is also one of the ways to threaten your security.
How exposed are the mobile devices?
While it’s probably easiest and most practical for most to watch adult content on a cell phone, you might want to reconsider this practice because recent research has shown that watching porn on your phone screen triggers a series of security alarms and that your device is at high risk of hacking.
A scope of malware aiming at your android device is even wider.
Looking at the statistics, a quarter of all vulnerable mobile users encountered some kind of malware while accessing porn content. Millions of Android users encountered a virus related to pornographic content at least once last year.
All of these attacks came from at least twenty different families of mobile malware but in several different ways. And what they have in common is that users come to these Android Trojans because they are mostly redirected to fake porn sites from the real ones.
WAP subscription-related malware includes all that malware that is intended to allow a user to open a page and click on an advertisement in order for attackers to withdraw money through its display or to enable a WAP subscription and withdraw money. They are also able to “eat” most of your data transfer, consume battery, collect contacts, call histories, locations, delete messages, install applications… Or invade your phone and mine for cryptocurrencies in the background.
Watching adult content movies on mobile phones poses a much greater threat to user safety than watching it on desktop computers. Operating systems on smartphones, especially Android, are far less secure than operating systems on desktop computers, given the large number of vulnerabilities that IT criminals could easily abuse. Be extra careful not to get carried away and browse for adult content on your company’s mobile device. It is true that most of us spend a lot of time at work and sometimes forget that we are surrounded by our colleagues, so we tend to use the business laptop during the break. We constantly have to be aware that everything that we type there can find a way to get to our superiors, regardless if it’s not adult content. This happens even if we delete the browsing history.
However, the motives for the attacks are often not understandable. Except when the attackers successfully steal the usernames, passwords, and credit card data to sell them at the black market.
On the other hand, if you have been paranoid about your name being published somewhere with your browser history, stop. Not even hackers are really interested in launching pages where information about who is watching what kind of pornography would be available. Such a nightmare is therefore not in anyone’s interest, but what we must not forget is that someone is always following us on the Internet.
It is very clear that the attacks disguised behind pornography are effective (if they weren’t so effective, there would not be so many). They make it even easier for the attackers themselves – those who have been victims of malware due to adult content watching, mostly decide not to report these cases, because of shame.
