How to browse adult websites safely
Consuming pornography is a more common habit than it seems. Therefore, except for some pathological cases, it can be considered a normal activity. But instead of worrying about possible carpal tunnel injuries, you may want to make sure you protect your privacy and security.
In principle, you do not have to be careful with the porn, but with the website where you are watching it.
That doesn’t mean that every porn site is a malware distribution hub, run by cybercriminals determined to harm their users on purpose, quite the contrary.
Payment page owners want customers to feel safe, have a good experience, and repeat visits.
However, there may be associated risks that are beyond the control of administrators.
Porn sites remain one of the most popular targets for hackers.
Many free pages to monetize the invention have embedded third-party ads.
These ads come in the form of iFrames and it is common for some malicious advertisers to take advantage of the popularity of these sites, to insert malware packages into some banners promising horny singles near your location and the like.
Adware
Once installed on your system, it will display ads with adult content even if you are no longer browsing the porn page.
It can also trigger more looping pop-ups or even fake security warnings to urge you to download malware.
Not only is this annoying, it can also invade privacy, and if you share a computer with multiple family members, you probably won’t be too happy to see ads for penis extenders and such gadgets when others are using the device. .
scams
The hackers claim to have taken control of the system and recorded the user frantically masturbating while watching porn.
They then threaten to send the images to all your contacts unless you pay a certain amount of money.
The good news is that most of the time the threat is a sham.
But in some cases, it can be real. Play it safe and make sure you stay safe by protecting your device with a reliable anti-malware solution.
Or better yet, cover the webcam with tape.
How to protect your security and privacy
You may be tempted to browse incognito to ensure that no one but you knows what sites you’ve visited.
While this may be a partial solution (doesn’t store search history, cookies, etc), incognito browsing isn’t really private.
Major browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla are very clear about this when you open a new incognito window in the browser.
Private browsing using Firefox
If your main concern is preventing people you live with or share a computer from finding traces of your online activity then incognito browsing is fine.
But your Internet service provider or company network administrator (if you ever get the bright idea of accessing such websites from your workplace) can still find the list of domains you’ve accessed.
If the people with access to your home network have a modicum of knowledge, they can know that too.
Install an ad blocker in the browser
As I have mentioned above, advertisements are one of the main sources of malicious code on porn websites.
It will largely prevent the appearance of malware-laden iFrames.
While an ad blocker can keep some of the risk at bay, you should know that they tend to turn off automatically once you enter incognito browsing mode, unless you manually change this setting.
uBlock Origin is an open source browser extension for content filtering and online ad blocking.
The extension is available for Safari, Firefox, Chromium, Chrome, Opera and Edge browsers, and stands out for its low memory usage
Keep this in mind when downloading movies
If you prefer downloads to streaming (old school!), make sure the files only have mp4, mov, or wmv suffixes. These are legitimate video file formats and there is literally no way they could contain malware.
Avoid compression formats and executable files such as .rar .zip .7z .bzip2 .exe etc.
Another tip is to never download such a movie from a file sharing site such as Torrents.
This is where all kinds of malware disguised as porn movies swarm, ready to infect your device.
You can even download illegal content like child pornography without being aware of it.
Avoid sites that ask you to install or update Adobe Flash Player
The end of life of Adobe Flash Player is good news, as it will drastically reduce the attack surface that villains can use to hack web browsers and operating systems.
To make sure that all users are aware of its disappearance, Adobe has started displaying alerts on Windows computers, advising users to immediately uninstall it from their systems.
Adobe Flash-Player a magnet for malware
Luckily it’s now a thing of the past (it was a real maware magnet) and web browsers no longer support it, using HTML5 instead.
Make sure sites are encrypted
You will know if you are in one if the website address starts with HTTPS, instead of HTTP.
HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure, Hypertext Transfer Protocol in Spanish) is an Internet communication protocol that protects the integrity and confidentiality of user data between their computers and the website.
Because you expect your online experience to be secure and private, we recommend that you adopt HTTPS to protect your connections to all websites, regardless of what they contain.
But keep in mind that anyone can buy an SSL certificate or get one for free, so just because a site has a security certificate doesn’t mean it’s legit.
Try not to go to free sites
If you want malware-free porn, then the best option is to pay, as long as the service offers guarantees.
Porn video files are simply movies encoded for digital distribution and do not pose a malware threat, and membership sites do not typically have invasive ads, nor do they facilitate data mining and malware delivery.
They want to keep you as a customer and not damage the device you are using so you can enjoy their movies or pictures.
It is a form of business, and as such they want to maintain a good reputation.
Social Login
But never use your social media profile to log in, or give out your primary email or phone number.
Prevent Google and Facebook and others from tracking your activity
Through Google Ads advertising trackers, (a service of the Google company that is used to offer sponsored advertising to potential advertisers) Google tracks website users.
Although they claim their ad services can never transmit personally identifiable information, realistically to more than 50% of adults who watch porn, I don’t think they’d be too happy about this.
Through a cookie, Facebook knows all the pages we visit if they have the “Like” button incorporated.
Even if we haven’t pressed the fucking button.
They state that their guidelines prohibit advertising trackers on sex websites, and such sites are blocked from data collection processes.
We’ll have to guess.
But just in case, fortunately, there are many tools that allow us to block this type of tracking.
The Facebook Container Firefox extension helps you isolate your web activity so Facebook can’t see it.
Privacy Badger
Privacy Badger is an extension, available for Firefox, Chrome and Opera. We just have to install it from the official page and it will do all the work.
By default, this extension will block all connections that do not come from the page we are visiting; It works not only for Google and Facebook, but also for other trackers.
How to watch porn without anyone knowing and stay safe
The next time you’re thinking about visiting an adult website, make sure you use a trusted Virtual Private Network (VPN), which will encrypt all your activities, through a secure tunnel.
Your IP address will also be hidden, making it very difficult for your internet service provider, third-party trackers, and hackers to link that data to your identity.
If you don’t want or can’t pay for one of these services, we recommend checking out ProtonVPN Free.
Unlike other free VPN services, there is no data collection, no advertising, no secret selling of users’ bandwidth and browsing history.
You can choose from 127 servers in 3 countries (USA, Netherlands and Japan).
Forget the stupid and absurd “200 MB per day” restrictions you can find on other free services – you can use ProtonVPN Free for as long as you need.
Even leave it connected 24 hours a day.
It is based in Switzerland, which has some of the strictest privacy laws in the world.
And don’t forget to have Windows Defender (or other security software) turned on, and with the latest malware definitions.
But nothing is going to protect you from everything: the first line of defense is you.
