If you get a virus on your computer, you’re faced with a difficult choice. Do you pretend that you’re stupid enough to click random links in your inbox? Or do you just own up to whomever that you’ve been visiting InsaneClownP****.info? Fortunately, the gullibility of webmasters on religious sites has given you a whole new excuse: It turns out religious sites are a hotbed of malware.



Symantec just released its usual yearly overview of Internet security, and it found something that anybody who’s had to clean Grandma’s computer has probably suspected. Namely, that hackers are targeted religious sites at a much higher rate:

…religious and ideological sites were found to have triple the average number of threats per infected site than adult/pornographic sites. We hypothesize that this is because pornographic website owners already make money from the internet and, as a result, have a vested interest in keeping their sites malware-free – it’s not good for repeat business.

Don’t get too smug, though: First of all, porn sites still managed to rank tenth in the whole “wreck your computer and steal your credit cards” derby. Secondly, Symantec found that 61% of malicious sites are actually honestly-run websites with a vulnerability that hackers are exploiting, without the webmaster’s knowledge. So basically if you’ve got a personally hosted site, some nerd in Estonia could be using you to infect your buddies right now.

The moral, of course, is that you should keep your anti-virus software up to date and pay attention when Google tells you a website is a nightmarish hell of malware. And also that your grandmother is actually listening to you about those links. Just be sure to check her history and have a discussion about safe surfing, and/or report for mind erasure therapy depending on what comes up.

image via Terry G. Alexander