What you need to know about Internet pornography

An old proverb says that forbidden fruit is the sweetest. It is in the people’s nature. Facile and ordinary things do not bring as much delight as something completely new, mysterious and hardly reachable can offer. People always strived for forbidden pleasure. However, it never was so easy to take than now. The Internet is an infinite source of different, even exotic pleasures, available any time and anywhere, you just need to have a computer. The most predominant of them is Internet pornography. According to current statistics, there are more than 4.2 millions of pornographic web sites (it is 12% of total web resources) and almost 400 millions of pages with adult content. 25 percent of daily search engine requests are searches for porn or erotic materials.

Of course, from the ethical point of view Internet pornography is a negative phenomenon. It is needless to say that adult materials and explicit content in the web are extremely dangerous for adolescents and especially little children. However, if you are a grown up man or woman, you can decide yourself do you need Internet pornography or not. Nobody thrusts it on you and nobody can prohibit you from accessing such kind of content. Adult materials aren’t illicit, eventually. Therefore let’s forget the moral side and try to answer other important questions: Does Internet pornography possess different threats? Can it somehow violate your privacy or affect your computer?

The answer to both questions is “Yes”. Internet pornography is not so harmless as it may look like. It really can hurt you. How? Read the following facts.

Spyware and adware

All pornographic web sites are made to earn money. Indeed, there are lots of commercial adult resources that offer “high quality XXX content” for certain subscription price. Naturally not everyone would pay for it, especially when the web is packed with those “absolutely free” sites. However, owners of such sites are far from being altruists. Yes, they do not ask you to pay for the content. Instead, their resources are filled with endless advertisements and annoying pop-ups, which you cannot disable or bypass. Moreover, most “free” sites secretly install adware and spyware parasites to their visitor computers. Why are they doing it? The answer is simple: for money. Advertising companies pay porn industry for spreading various spyware and adware. This business is huge and complex.

Hijackers and plug-ins

Average pornography site needs lots of visitors. However, essential part of its traffic is made by users who have accidentally accessed the site. They do not wish to come back here again. But the resource owner cannot tolerate such behavior. He fills his web site with malicious code that silently installs specific parasites known as browser hijackers and browser plug-ins to visitor computers. These pests change the web browser’s default start and search pages, add toolbars and various add-ons that redirect the user to a recently visited adult site. Most such parasites are difficult to detect and remove. It may take months until the user will finally get rid of the infection. All this time once visited pornography resource will receive necessary number of visitors.

Dialers

Some Internet pornography services rely on dialer programs, which provide “free” access to special member areas with the most exciting content. All you have to do is to download and install a dialer. Some web sites will kindly do it for you. Secretly, of course. A dialer provides the same Internet access as your local ISP does. The only difference is that your computer would be connected to the web through high-cost foreign phone number. This would result in receiving enormous bills from your local phone company. As you can see, even “free” pornography costs a lot.

Carding

Some “really reputable” adult portals offer beneficial proposals: “Pay N dollars now and receive unlimited access to our high quality members area! No monthly subscriptions! Pay only once!” etc. Sounds like the truth. However, I have to disappoint you. Internet pornography is full of frauds and thieves. They will grant you no access to any extra resources. Even if they will, they may steal all your money using a credit card number and other data you have provided during the registration.

Spam

E-mail spam is a less dangerous, but very annoying thing about Internet pornography. Most adult sites send large amount of spam to their registered members or anonymous visitors. Providing your e-mail address on single web page may result in receiving additional five daily e-mails from related adult services. It’s not an eventuality, it is the statistics.

As you can see, visiting some adult resources can be really dangerous. Nevertheless, my goal is not to intimidate or dissuade you from this. I just want to warn you. Be extremely careful when visiting web resources with explicit content, even if you are an adult. Use a secure web browser and good anti-spyware. Don’t let porn kings to make money out of you.