While it has long been known that some such sites have the ability to hack into a visitor’s computer, there are now reports that at least one Internet purveyor of porn has the means to disable a computer with a flood of pop-up ads if the potential customer doesn’t provide payment for a subscription that automatically follows a “free trial” of the site’s disgusting offerings.
According to foxnews.com , those who sign up do get their three days of “free access,” but immediately thereafter they are the victims of a daily barrage of pop-up windows that cannot be closed—whether or not the computer is connected to the Internet—unless they pay up.
As much as I dislike strong-armed business tactics, I don’t have any sympathy for someone who views pornography—on the Internet or otherwise—and whose computer is held hostage in this manner for a payment. Pornography is an ugly corruption of that which God created for good. It perverts and distorts all of the God-given purposes for sexual intimacy.
Yet these severely misguided individuals who are caught up in seeking after these addictive and dangerous temptations of the flesh become victims of their own deviancy, as this entry at McAfee Avert Labs blog suggests:
“What it appears they are doing is, in my humble opinion, a form of extortion based on the (usually correct) assumption that a person’s computer will be key to many other activities in their daily life. Also, possibly with inadvertent/passive blackmail as a bonus: someone not wanting other family members or a spouse to realize they’ve been surfing for pornography, or perhaps even more dire, someone to see it on a computer at their workplace, and becoming desperate to silence the persistent billing pop-ups.”
This business decision by this Web site owner demonstrates—in a unique way—the physical, emotional, and spiritual snare of pornography. As any fisherman would know, without a barb on the fishhook, most fish would escape the line before being hauled into the boat.
The satanic siren call of pornography does not let people—once caught—off the hook so easily (Romans 7:21-25); for once they have purposely viewed pornography, they are changed individuals, with disturbing, often violent, images burned onto their psychological “hard drives.”
