Third of British Adults Have Had a Virus from Adult Content Online
Kaspersky Lab has conducted a new study that revealed that nearly a third of British adults have contracted a virus on their computer, laptop or mobile device after looking at adult content online.
The cyber-security and anti-virus provider asked 1,000 adults within its new study.
The study discovered that the virus has left one in six of the respondents (17%) blaming other family members or friends for their devices contracting the infection after they had visited the adult sites themselves.
Participants said they looked at adult content online five times per week, and then two fifths (41%) admitted that they looked at it at last once per day. This adds up to 23 minutes browsing adults sides per visit, on average.
This figure then equates to over four days or 104 hours of browsing adult content per year.
12% revealed that they do not practice safe surfing, as they admitted to having no internet security software installed on their computers or other devices.
25% also thought that it was safe to watch adult websites on their tablets and smartphones, as they believed they would not get a virus this way.
David Jacoby, Security Evangelist and a spokesperson for Kaspersky Lab said: “British adults are being caught with their pants down when it comes to online safe surfing with many not using any form of cyber contraception.
“In 2017 we identified at least 27 variations of PC malware which specifically hunt for credentials to paid adult content websites. Adult sites are attractive to cyber criminals because they have a vast number of users to potentially infect and those users are less likely to report the infection due to the embarrassing nature of how they got it.”
He added: “Kaspersky Lab sees around 323,000 malware bugs everyday which are designed to either steal your identity, corrupt computer files or hold you to ransom.”
19% of the respondents also admitting to thinking it was safe to use the web browser in private mode and 28% admitting to believing that they wouldn’t get a virus if they cleared their history beforehand.
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