After recent research it has been revealed that two of the internet’s top adult content porn sites carry a substantial malware risk for their users.
The malware itself is not found in the actual website but in the host of advertisements and pop-ups that come as part and parcel of accessing both adult video streaming sites.
The two websites that were named were Pornhub.com and xhamster.com, which are reported to be visited by millions of users per day, and both of the sites are seriously hit by malicious malware advertising.
The research was made by Conrad Longmore, who said that; “The porn sites themselves were clear of malicious content but the embedded advertisements within their pages that created problems for users.”
“We call these malicious advertisements ‘malvertising,” explained Mr Longmore.
Windows customers are primarily at risk from the malware, and it’s recommended that any who may frequent the site use stringent internet security software as a precaution. The report states that xhamster.com (using listings from monitoring firm Alexa) is the 46th most popular site on the internet and had ‘malvertising’ on 1,067 out of 20,986 pages (5%) screened in the past 90 days.
With the average xhamster user visiting 10 or more pages per visit, this means that users have a 40% risk of malware infection when using these sites. Additionally, Pornhub.com was found to have a much higher 12.7% of malicious advertising on its pages.
The BBC also reports that the internet’s most popular porn site, xvideos.com, was not found to have any harmful adverts during the time it was sampled by Google’s system.
So the moral of the story is, stay safe and always use protection!