On any given day, you open your email and find an email that, at least initially, seems suspicious. It has slipped into your inbox, although you don’t know who sent it to you. Inside there is a message in which they claim to have a pornographic video of you, or some photos where you appear naked or naked. There is a link on the back, inviting you to check it out. The message also explains that so that this video does not see the light and is uploaded to all the platforms of the network, you must pay an amount through a link. A full-fledged sexual extortion that, obviously, has no real basis. However, in an age where we all take provocative photos of ourselves, and even record raunchy videos that can be leaked, one no longer knows what to think. And that is why these scams are so effective.
Privacy on the Internet is a real chimera, and that is something that we should be clear about without concessions, from the outset. We are all the time delivering our mail to pages that will later use it to, in the best of cases, send us spam. But these emails can also end up on one of the long lists that are sold on the Internet, and used by hackers and scammers in their cyber crimes. In fact, despite the fact that network security is a very serious issue and that everyone already has at least a base of knowledge about, these types of scams are still common. And they happen because we are still too naive to click on certain links, always hidden, that take us to pages where hackers can enter our computer. Porn is, in fact, one of the most effective hooks out there in this regard. When we enter pornographic pages we go through a state of excitement that sometimes makes us make not-so-intelligent decisions. Click on the link that seems so suspicious, click on that advertisement that we know is going to give us problems… How to avoid this type of scam? In this article we will explain it.
A very common content
Although there are no official data on this, it is estimated that more than 20% of all the content on the Internet has to do with eroticism and porn. In other words, a fifth of this gigantic online universe is only for adults, and seeks the excitement and morbidity of the viewers. If we take into account that several of the most visited pages on the web are precisely pornographic, it will not cost us too much to understand the success of this type of content. We live in the era with the greatest accessibility to porn in history, and it is reasonable that cybercriminals also take advantage of that candy to carry out their plans. In addition, these types of pages are usually very different from the usual ones and play with a much more baroque and spectacular design, full of stimuli.
Subscription payment platforms
In recent years, sexual platforms where a user has the right to certain exclusive content in exchange for a subscription have become very fashionable. Payment is normally made on a monthly basis, through the usual means, such as a credit card or Paypal. For example, this last method is highly recommended for online payments, since we can ask Paypal for explanations if there is a problem. The fact is that these platforms can become problematic if we end up paying more for that content, or if we give data that implies a breach in our security. Many hackers have used the accounts of these platforms as a gateway to users’ computers, thanks to certain irregularities.
We must also be very clear that some of these platforms are directly a scam because they are offering us content that is not enough for what we are going to pay for it. In fact, in many cases we can find it for free on the Internet, so paying will be an unnecessary expense. Another common scam, although this one is legal, is to offer a small trial period and then start wildly charging subscribers. Many porn pages live directly from this trick, something that they warn, yes, but with a small mouth and after convincing you with attractive offers. Having accepted the terms without reading them, something we all do, we cannot claim later either, so it is better to be very careful on this type of platform.
Beware of ads
Another of the most common methods to scam us, through malware or the extraction of personal data, are advertisements. Anyone already has an ad blocker in their trusted browser, but it is true that this type of blocker does not work as well on these pages. In order to enjoy its full content, many ask us to uninstall that blocker, and that is when we are fully exposed to ads. They appear everywhere, even in the form of pop-ups, without us realizing it, in pop-up windows. Sometimes we can even click on them without realizing it and end up on a rather suspicious page.
These types of ads are very well camouflaged on porn pages, where there are a lot of graphic stimuli around them. In fact, when downloading a video it is difficult to know which link to click on, because these pages are expressly made to create confusion. If we enter any of them, it is best to leave as soon as possible and run the online antivirus, in case a Trojan has slipped in. It is one of the most common ways to fall for this type of scam, because on many occasions the user does not even realize that something is wrong until it is too late. For this reason, caution is the best tool to avoid this type of problem.
Virtual cards, a highly recommended option
Of course, this type of scam should not block our desire to pay for certain erotic content on the network, if that is our wish. As we said before, precaution must be taken when using this type of platform, so instead of giving the numbers of a usual card, a good option is to create a virtual card. This type of tokens can have a single use and serve to avoid registering our data directly on these pages, giving us more security. The first time we create it, it can be somewhat cumbersome to understand how it works and load it with money from another source. However, it is highly recommended to prevent our card or account data from being in dangerous hands.