Nearly one-quarter of malware on mobile devices comes from porn websites, according to a new study from Blue Coat, a Web security and optimization company. Mobile users don't check out porn sites often -- less than 1% of all mobile traffic is pornography. But when they do go to those sites, the risk of inadvertently downloading malware to their devices increases three-fold. That makes watching porn on smartphones a far bigger threat than viewing porn on a PC.
Porn led to more malware on smartphones and tablets than e-mail spam, malicious websites, and fake apps combined.
Part of the problem, Blue Coat said, is that the nature of mobile devices makes differentiating legitimate sites from malicious ones a tricky task. There is no way to hover over shortened URLs to reveal their true destination, for example.
"No matter how tantalizing a link might look on a desktop, there are cues that you shouldn't go there, such as an address that just doesn't look safe," said Hugh Thompson, chief security strategist for Blue Coat. "When you click a link on a mobile phone, it's harder to know what form of Russian roulette they're playing."
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