Internet Security Firm Sees More Malware on Religious Websites Than Porn Sites

It may seem counterintuitive, but a new security report from the firm Symantec has found religious websites hold as much as three times more malicious malware compared to pornographic ones, according to PC World.

Although PC World notes reports that come from security firms also selling virus protection software, such as this annual Internet Security Threat Report, should be taken with a "pinch of salt," they still provide intriguing observations.

Here's what the report had to say with regard to religious site malware:

Moreover, 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.

PC World calls it a "notable discrepancy" that religious sites average about 115 security threats and adult websites only about 25 threats.

Overall Symantec reported an 80 percent increase of malware in 2011 compared to 2010. On a perhaps happier note, email spam has decreased from 88.5 percent of all email in 2010 to about 75.1 percent. PC World attributes this decrease to "law enforcement action which shut down the Rustock worldwide botnet that was responsible for sending out large amounts of spam."