April 2012

Why I like rich dirty old men?

By Rick Smith

rants@vcmail.net 

How's that for gotcha title. I wanted to include a little ditty to start my rant like I always do but my google search of "clean dirty jokes" was a bit of an oxymoron to start with. Everything I found was lewd, crude, rude or all of the above. SO in an effort to show a modicum of decorum I will refrain from repeating anything off-color and just get to ranting.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I have a personal attraction to people with a desire to pursue sinful habits, it's just that they make my best customers for repeat business. It's like walking around a bad neighborhood wearing a hoodie. Even if your reasons for doing so are legit and you're not a criminal or gangster you assume the appearance of one. It makes you a target. In the newspaper this month there were two police sketch drawings of men wanted for felonies committed and both of them were pictured with hoodies. So not only does this increase your chances of being noticed by law enforcement it also brings you more attention by gangsters looking to increase their street cred by messing with you. So what does all of this have to do with computers you ask? Surfing the internet by going to inappropriate websites is in itself inherently dangerous but doing so without protection will almost certainly make you a customer of mine. I have many clients who seem to have a penchant for looking at naked people. As a man I can sympathize with them as I believe that woman was God's greatest handiwork but for personal reasons I have decided to limit myself to just desiring one. And let me tell you I have my hands full with just one. But not everyone feels the way I do and it has made an online industry of porn. Here are some interesting statistics. These are from 2007 but you'll get the idea.

X-rated content aside, are online porn sites safe to visit? A study conducted by International Secure System Lab--one of the first to examine the security risks of browsing porn websites--suggests that "shady" practices and malware are common on many porn sites, which could potentially make visitors the targets of cybercriminals. The researchers analyzed some 269,000 free and pay adult websites on 35,000 domains. Their findings? Over a third of free porn sites had "some type of activity that sought to mislead or misdirect visitors," MacWorld explains. "One technique is including a JavaScript "catcher" that hijacks a Web browser, making it difficult for a visitor to exit a particular Web site." Just over 3% of the adult websites they analyzed were "booby-trapped", hosting some combination of viruses, spyware, and other malware. Many sites (10.9% of pay sites and 26.2% of free sites) also used "blind links" that "re-direct visitors so when they click on a link they do not see the video or image they were expecting but are passed to an affiliate site," the BBC explains. The researchers created two free-content porn sites of their own, and then paid $160 to direct traffic to the sites. The researchers checked to see whether visitors to the dummy sites were using updated versions of Adobe Flash Player, among other plugins, as hackers frequently target out-of-date programs like Flash Player, which is common on porn sites. They found that nearly half their 49,000 visitors were at risk for infection or exploitation. Over 20,000 visitors "had a least one vulnerable component installed and more than 5,700 visitors had multiple vulnerable components," the International Secure System Lab's study found.

What does all this mean to me, your not so humble PC repair guy? Constant revenue streams. When users frequent these "free" sights they pick up what I used to call "COOTIES" as a boy. This was term all the boys used for anything that was feminine. Using "Free" porn sites will cost you more in PC repair than if you pay for view. Let me give you an example. One of my clients is 82 years old and is what I would call wealthy. I sold him a new PC last year and every month I get a phone call that something is wrong with his PC. I use our VNC (Virtual Network Computing) application to remotely access his PC to fix the problems he gets into frequenting these types of websites. As I clean up his PC I always find something I'd rather not see or know about. But it does bring in money to pay my ever increasing energy bills. So it is some sort of annuity for the company but it does have some awful downsides. Here are some sobering statistics.

Internet Pornography Statistics

The amount of pornography on the internet can be difficult to fathom. A total of 4.2 million websites contain pornography. That is 12 percent of the total number of websites. There are 100,000 websites that offer pornography and 1 in 7 youths report being solicited for sex on the internet.

Internet Pornography Statistics

Internet users who view porn       42.7%

Children Internet Pornography Statistics

Access to pornography is available from early on. The average age of a child's first exposure to pornography is 11. A total of 90 percent of children ages 8-16 have viewed pornography online. Pornographers use many character names that appeal to children such as "Pokemon."

Children Internet Pornography Statistics

This kind of stuff is not funny. I have a 7 year old son who is now using the Internet to go to PBSKIDS.ORG, GOLDFISHFUN.ORG & LEGO.COM. He opened up a web browser the other day trying to get to the Goldfish site. We usually put a link on the desktop for him but had not done so for that site. I told my wife we are going to setup some internet filtering quick. I do not want my son to become one of the statistics listed above. I want to be a child as long as possible.

So what all of this doing to us a society? It's warping our sense of right and wrong. By exposing ourselves to this material we are robbing ourselves of our innocence. The stuff you can find in a couple of clicks of a mouse used to take a lifetime of perversion to acquire a taste for and it's just sitting out these waiting for you. The moral and financial drain on our nation and society is unfathomable and seemingly unstoppable. The future doesn't seem so bright anymore.