According to a study by Kaspersky Lab and the University of Wuerzburg in Germany, women use the Internet just as enthusiastically as men, but in different ways.

The study was conducted on a group of men and women and showed that men tend to search for entertainment, games and sexual content while women look for communication and interaction with friends or romantic partners.

“Twice as many men as women reported different sorts of malware attacks during the period of the study. Girls are expected to be more responsible, obedient, and sexually restrained, thus, depending on one’s gender, certain roles are performed, leading to the stereotype gender differences”, said Professor Dr Frank Schwab, media psychologist at the University of Wuerzburg.

Generally, women prefer letting men take risks in life which translates to how they behave online. Also,women’s’ caring characters lead to more communicative and considerate behaviour both online and off. In terms of risk taking, they seem to take the more reasonable, considered path resulting in risk avoidance and a safer way of life.

“There’s an increased risk of infection from visiting certain types of web sites – including pornographic and gambling sites. It’s not the content of these sites per se that makes them less safe, but the fact that they attract high numbers of visitors – and where there are visitors, there will be criminals,” explains David Emm, ecurity esearcher at Kaspersky Lab

“This provides cybercriminals with a large pool of potential victims, human psychology also plays into their hands where some of these sites are concerned victims are typically less willing to complain if they get infected whilst using one of these sites, than say a banking site, or fall victim to a scam, when accessing pornographic content”.

[Image -CC Blaise Alleyne]