'Shady' porn site practices put visitors at risk (BBC)

[Drew Wilson]

Visitors to porn sites are at serious risk of being exploited by cyber criminals, a study has suggested.

It found that many sites harboured malware or used "shady" practices to squeeze money out of their visitors.

By creating their own porn sites researchers found that many consumers were vulnerable to known bugs and loopholes.

Competition among porn sites makes the online adult industry ripe for abuse by hi-tech criminals.

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Malware on porn sites? Nooooo, really? [/sarcasm]

[Signa]

I'm shocked no one has picked up on this for implementing on a virus scanner. Set up some system that flags hazardous sites and then warns everyone else. No porn site will last long if no one will visit them.

[Drew Wilson]

Actually, Norton (sorta) has this and it even gives FireFox an extension that tells you if a site is malicious or not. The only problem is, you have to actually visit the site first, but at least it blocks the stuff once you get there.

The only time I've seen this kind of thing in action (and that's not entirely saying a whole lot since I already know what I'm retrieving online to only use Google for occasional info/ref. retrieval) is when doing a Google search. It'll either put a tick mark next to the results (site's safe), a question mark (not sure) or (I think) an 'x' (malware site)

The downfall to all of this is that you have to pack around Norton (a bit of a resource hog at times) to have this feature. :\

[mountain_rage]

I'm shocked no one has picked up on this for implementing on a virus scanner. Set up some system that flags hazardous sites and then warns everyone else. No porn site will last long if no one will visit them.

That feature has been implemented in numerous virus scanners, firefox extensions, google and if I'm not mistaken google chrome and possibly internet explorer.

[Signa]

That feature has been implemented in numerous virus scanners, firefox extensions, google and if I'm not mistaken google chrome and possibly internet explorer.

Shows you how much I know about porn sites. Regardless, it would be nice if the feature was more unified, because not everyone is using Norton, or Google, or Firefox with those extensions. I want something that all users automatically have access to, and they don't even know about it until it warns them.

[mountain_rage]

Shows you how much I know about porn sites. Regardless, it would be nice if the feature was more unified, because not everyone is using Norton, or Google, or Firefox with those extensions. I want something that all users automatically have access to, and they don't even know about it until it warns them.

Again, I fail to see how this isn't automatic. Check out Google Chrome security

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/more/security.html

Phishing and malware detectors warning, and the software runs in its own sandbox.

[Drew Wilson]

I think the issue might be legal more than anything else. Malware and the law has had quite an interesting relationship (at least, in the US) There was a fight in 2005 to allow researchers to probe spyware in spite of the USs strong anti-circumvention provision reference.

While it could be circumvention and other provisions in the DMCA that could make things murky, there's also the possibility of libel rules making things difficult for such a system.

Unfortunately, I'm not an expert in libel cases to know for sure though, so I could be off-base with that.

[Excrement_Cranium]

Norton 360 version 2 is what I have. It checks pages listed on google searches as well.

It gets hokey with the firefox implementation on occasion. For instance, when I disable AdBlock Plus, it takes down my Norton... /facepalm

I don't surf much any more, though.

[Signa]

Again, I fail to see how this isn't automatic. Check out Google Chrome security

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/more/security.html

Phishing and malware detectors warning, and the software runs in its own sandbox.

It might be, but not everyone uses Chrome. In other words, only Chrome users are going to not visit those sites, and all the other browsers (I'm looking at IE) are still going to keep that site alive. The point I'm trying to make is I want something that will choke a site to death if it's playing shady.