DERBY is the fourth worst in a list of 50 UK cities hit by cyber attacks, according to a new report.
And internet porn websites could be partly to blame.
Derby city residents are nearly three-and-a-half times more likely to get hacked than the national average.
Home to the nation's biggest population, London had the most computer infections last year with 1,928,098.
But, calculated per head, the capital ended up way behind first-placed Manchester with 280,905 infections – nine times the average rate.
Derby came fourth by that reckoning, with a total of 51,438 infections.
US-based anti-hacking specialists EnigmaSoftware.com analysed more than three million infections that hit British computers last year to come up with the statistics.
Patrick Morganelli, senior vice-president of technology at the firm, who are makers of anti-spyware products, said one of the most common means of cyber attacks is from web sites that contain infected content or that ask users to download infected files. Many times, those are adult websites.
Users are often asked to download updates to their web browser video players so they can watch adult videos. Instead of an update, the user downloads an infection.
Mr Morganelli said: "We're not saying that people in Manchester, Sheffield, Derby, and London are visiting more adult web sites than people in other cities.
"But that still is one of the biggest sources of the malware that our software detects."
Nonetheless he may be on to something. On Wednesday, the Derby Telegraph reported that therapists are seeing a significant rise in the number of Derby mean who are addicted to sex and internet porn.
Mr Morganelli said: "I wish there was an easy way to determine what makes people in one area more susceptible to malware infections.
"But there are so many different ways that infections can end up on computers that it's tough to make any generalisations about why certain people in certain cities seem to have more than others."
Another big source of infections is when people are tricked into clicking on links that either download malware or take them to a website that has malware on it.
Those links can come in the form of e-mails that look like something legitimate, or in social media messages that have been hijacked by hackers.
Mr Morganelli said: "Because of the growth in online communication – be it Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram – there are now more and more ways for bad guys to reach out to people and trick them into clicking on links."
Online shopping is another source of infections. People who click on links in e-mails promising great deals, or people who scour the internet looking for the best prices can sometimes end up clicking on a link that leads to infection.
