Internet pornography and computer security

There seems to be a general consensus that porn sites are more likely to somehow compromise your computer than ordinary sites. Why do people think this? Why should a porn site be any more likely to use some evil zero-day JavaScript exploit than a non-pornographic site of comparable popularity? And when you're looking for porn, you're looking for images or videos (or text), not executables, so ordinary malware shouldn't be an issue.

Maybe people take the idea of porn consumption as simulated sex a bit too literally and assume that malware takes the place of STDs. Or maybe people actually are more likely to run afoul of domain squatters or search-engine spam when they're looking for porn, because they're less loyal to a handful of sites than they are for most of their web browsing, and because they don't bookmark porn sites. I have noticed that illegitimate Google results tend to have porn, I guess because the bad guys figure that porn is the best way to keep people on a page they weren't actually looking for.

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I'm not dead yet.

It's true. I don't really know why.

Kodiologist posted...

Why should a porn site be any more likely to use some evil zero-day JavaScript exploit than a non-pornographic site of comparable popularity?

People are less open to discussing porn sites. Thus, I would suspect that the message "yahoo.com has a virus" would spread more quickly than "someequallypopularrisquesite.com" because people, in general, would be more embarrassed to let it be known that they visit the former than the latter, and so would spread such messages at different rates.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton

Hmm, that's a funny idea. I didn't think of that. But I don't think word of mouth plays an important role in keeping people away from malicious sites. The only instance I can recall of people warning each other about a malicious site is Bulbapedia.

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I'm not dead yet.

I figured because the vast majority of people don't pay for pornography. The old saying "if you can't tell what someone's product is, you're their product" indicates that they're riddled with malware.

Also a quick survey of pornographic websites would indicate that they're riddled with malware.

Although I guess you're right that porn probably isn't significantly more malwarey than, say, online poker, or anything else that's unsavory. Certainly less so than kiddy-and-old-people-traps like Bulbapedia and pictures-of-your-grandkids.com
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

willis5225 posted...

I figured because the vast majority of people don't pay for pornography. The old saying "if you can't tell what someone's product is, you're their product" indicates that they're riddled with malware.

But people don't pay fees for most websites. Porn is normal that way.

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I'm not dead yet.

Hm, point. But such websites (ad-supported content sources) have fairly low overhead.

GameFAQs, for example, is all unpaid user-content--both the FAQs and the message boards. Websites like the Huffington Post are storied in their exploitative pay schemes for content. Pornography (in theory) has actor/models, directors, producers, photographers\camera operators, film editors, sound, real publishing costs (e.g. for periodicals and DVDs), etc. These are some real costs (in addition to the real costs of hosting web content). There's also a substantial volume of content which is generally content of a more complicated character--a video, even if it's a video of some people humping, took way longer to produce than this post. With the additional outlay, you'd expect the need for additional revenue.

Now sure, the average porno will probably be responsible for the serving of more ads than this post, but again its production was orders of magnitude more expensive. One might conclude that the ads themselves must (in addition to being served more often) generate orders of magnitude more money per view/click--and we all know what kind of ad does that!

The side consideration is that a lot of internet pornography isn't consumed directly from the producer/publisher/whatever. I don't have figures about how/whether or not the various aggregators out there compensate producers, but it seems likely that many of them don't (as I conclude from the lack of interest in labeling, citation, or retaining set/unit contiguity in favor of variety and volume).

Aggregators that outright steal their content have no overhead, so they could easily subsist on ads like a GameFAQs, but why on earth would they? Their reputation is inherently unsavory, and therefore they receive no benefit from not engaging in scummy business practices. They don't have a reputation or a brand to maintain (unless they build a brand around being "that one porno aggregator that doesn't lace its image with malware," but I label them a special case, and they also seem to have the imprimatur of several content producers).

The fact is that consumers expect and accept a certain level of malware in their pornography. Whether or not the existence of such malware was a misconception at some earlier point in time, we now know beyond a shadow of doubt that people in droves will go and consume pornography at the cost of "you'll get some malware." It is downright irresponsible of a porn-offering website not to be riddled with malware in exchange for money.

(And actually now that you mention it, I don't trust, say, Buzzfeed, any more than internet porn. I absolutely don't read Buzzfeed or the Huffington Post or their ilk except in a fresh incognito window (that is, one that won't keep cookies). )
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

Guys I think I love business.

That's the second time today I've really enjoyed discussing a business model. Maybe I should become a porno accountant.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

Huh. I see. But I got the impression (I think from A Billion Wicked Thoughts and this one article in The New York Times, and also how Redditors talk about r/gonewild a lot more than r/nsfw) that amateur porn is a lot more popular than professional porn these days. Does that change things?

Maybe I should become a porno accountant.

As pornography-related careers go, you could do a lot worse.

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I'm not dead yet.

In the interest of being above-board, I'm half-remembering an SA thread by a couple of production-side people in the pornography making. I'm actually kind of curious about this now, though, and my next hitting up of the library may include searching out a monograph on the subject.

I guess there are three possibilities spring to mind:

Disclaimer: I say "possibilities." I obviously don't have pornographic org-charts, so I'm proceeding with the assumption that that industry is arranged like any other media industry with elaborate webs of parent companies and collaborations and distribution agreements. Every actor/ress who sees distribution is using someone else's accounting software, servers, business plans, marketing, etc., through a distribution agreement with a studio.

If that's right, I don't know how to distinguish between an "independent" porno-whatever and a "corporate" (for lack of a better term) whatever, unless we set the bar very very low--you can be "independent" only if you are the only actor in your own employ, you do your own distribution, you own your own webhosting, etc. (Or you're an exhibitionist hosting everything on your "hey here's me naked" tumblr.) These truly independent folks must be a vanishingly small minority.

1) Amateur as "Indie"

"Amateur" is a genre specification and not an indicator of organizational makeup. Major studios routinely produce videos that look crappy or that pretend to depict spontaneous, amateur events. (E.g. the ones where people have college orgies to make us feel bad about not having attended orgies in college.) These are "amateur" in aesthetic, like how the Offspring are punk-rock: Sure they're a three-piece band, but but there's money and a corporate structure backing them because that aesthetic attracts a certain demographic. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it points to a false Establishment/Amateur dichotomy.)

As evidence, consider that just as in film or literature, there is a real technique, a real "language" of pornography that make certain images or arrangements effective. However by design these are not apparent to the passive viewer. If I may cite cracked.com (probably NSFW? I dunno, it's about porno):
http://www.cracked.com/article_18392_6-reasons-homemade-porn-worse-idea-than-you-think.html
There's a long discursus about how one of the reasons it's a terrible idea to make a sex tape is that you're ignorant of the way to pose and shoot such a thing--angles and frame composition and blocking are important and you'll have no idea about how they work unless you've studied the form. Those refined, professional techniques do shape what's labeled amateur pornography, because otherwise it is unwatchable.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

2) Define "popular"

The porno market is roughly the size of the "air" market--nigh universal and insatiable. High popularity of a particular emergent aesthetic doesn't need to indicate a crisis for other aesthetics.

In addition, (I suspect that) pornography isn't purchased and consumed exclusively along these aesthetical lines. A preference for one kind does not indicate an exclusive preference (nor are there necessarily clear divisions between these aesthetics and genres).

3) The "voice of the Internet" and Snakes on a Plane

Opinions on the internet are a poor predictor of actual economic behavior, for a lot of reasons we've all experienced firsthand: The loudest people tend to ensure that their opinion is overrepresented; internet fame is notoriously fickle; it's way easier to express enthusiasm in text than to act on that enthusiasm (the "internet petition rule"); most of all, internet communities tend to be small, heavily skewed microcosms that fail to account for the opinions of the massive, massive numbers of people who don't express their opinions at a given spot on the internet.

Since we're talking about Reddit, there's also the law of human nature about free stuff, as demonstrated with that "terrible chocolate" experiment I read about somewhere last week (apologies for terrible cited site):

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2008/11/12/a-free-kiss-beats-a-truffle/

"Participants in one group were given two options: a Lindt truffle for 14 cents or a Hershey Kiss for one penny. Seventy-three percent chose the truffle and 27% chose the Kiss. Then, for participants in a second group, both chocolates were discounted by the same amount, by one penny. So costs went from 14 cents and 1 cent to 13 cents and zero. This time, only 31% chose the truffle, while 73% chose the free Kiss."

On top of that, r/gonewild is its own creepy, creepy, creepy thing. I think there's a lot going on there with power dynamics and MRAs getting off on subverting traditional gender roles in a way that conforms to traditional gender roles and other stuff. But I don't claim to be an expert on Reddit culture.

It might be enough to say that that's part of that vanishingly small minority and move on.

(Also, as a great example of what we were saying earlier, I just looked up a help topic in Excel and then saw that it was directing me to "about.com" which made me go "s***" and close the tab. Because I fear the malware that they have at about.com.)
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

All good points, although I have to admit I'm a little troubled at how much thought you've put into this.

On top of that, r/gonewild is its own creepy, creepy, creepy thing. I think there's a lot going on there with power dynamics and MRAs getting off on subverting traditional gender roles in a way that conforms to traditional gender roles and other stuff.

That would be consistent with the anti-feministic leanings that run through r/mensrights and the default subs.

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I'm not dead yet.

I think I'm completely serious about becoming a porn accountant.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir

I'd like to know the methodology on that chocolate experiment a little more, but am not willing to click the link because I hate academic/white-paper writing.

Did participants actually have to give a coin and did they actually get a chocolate? Or was this more of a "think about what you would do in this scenario" survey deal? I wonder if "aw s***, I don't carry currency, I'm a debit card guy now" entered into the experiment.

Because porn sites used to have a TON of viruses. I speak from experience. I had a computer dedicated to it. It was filled to the nose with viruses. It isn't that way any longer though.
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"...you should try reading my posts being getting all emo." --FoxMetal