As we all know, the best research begins with setting up a fake porn site. Here are some of the highlights from Christopher Mims:

• First, some numbers. 42.7% of internet users view porn, and 20% of men view porn whilst at work.
• One of Mims major findings was the vulnerability of porn viewers to malicious software. 43% of clicks on Mim’s porn website came from users with a known vulnerability in their browsers.
• ‘Traffic Brokers’ sell adult traffic to websites, to the tune of $160 for 47,000 clicks. The researchers discovered that if their site had hosted malicious software, they could have made $130 per 1,000 installs of said malware.
• Wondering how prevalent this was, the researchers then trawled almost half a million adult URLs, and found 3.23% of these triggered ‘malicious behaviour’.
• The study also found that 9 out of 10 adult sites were free, and made their money by directing traffic to pay sites or other free sites.

The full article is over at the MIT technology review, and can be found here

Source: MIT Technology Review