Governments around the world have now implemented stay-at-home orders and lockdowns as a way to slow the fast-spreading coronavirus pandemic, and that means more people are working at home—and they'll be using their computers for more than just official business, from perusing social media and playing online gaimes to watching free porn.
But according to a National Public Radio report on Monday, there is a downside to spending more time online: more danger of hacking attacks, viruses and malware.
The NPR report warns that companies may find themselves more vulnerable to hacks if locked-down workers access their corporate networks remotely from the same computers they use to check out free porn sites in their free minutes—something they would be much more reluctant to do in the office.
“Adult sites have always been in the top three categories of websites hosting malicious content," cybersecurity expert Tyler Moffitt told NPR. "I would say that is a reasonable assumption—that we're going to see an increase, due to porn at home. You know, these cybercriminals are seizing on this opportunity during a difficult time of pandemic."
As AVN.com has reported, in 2017 alone researchers found that more than a million internet users contracted dangerous viruses on their smartphones and other devices from visiting secretly infected porn sites.
The danger of malicious hackers and cybercriminals threatens not only corporate employers, but the workers themselves, who thanks to their new homebound status spend more time on networks not protected by sophisticated corporate firewalls.
"There has been a dramatic increase in cybercrime and cyberattacks over the past two weeks, targeting Americans,” said cybersecurity specialist Tom Kellerman, in the NPR report—adding that opportunistic hackers are aware that more workers are now online without the shield of corporate cybersecurity.
In addition to unintentionally downloaded malware, workers during the coronavirus shutdown also face more conventional threats from scammers, sometimes posing as big retailers such as Costco with bogus offers to sell much-needed supplies—like toilet paper, hand sanitizer and even protective face masks.
In the wake of the $2 trillion coronavirus relief package that passed Congress last week, another common scam comes in the form of emails offering to immediately send out stimulus checks—if only the recipients hand over their bank account information.
The NPR article suggests some “digital hygiene” measures to combat viruses, such as cleaning old documents out of Dropbox or Google Drive and routinely changing passwords.
And on top of that, AVN would suggest actually paying for your porn. Join a membership site, pay for downloads ... and don’t click on random links promising something for nothing.
Photo by Ruthson Zimmerman / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
