Relax, your personal porn-watching habits will be protected.
That’s the message from two of the world’s most popular adult internet sites — PornHub and YouPorn — following the passage of a bill on Tuesday in Congress that would allow internet service providers to sell browsing history and other data to marketers.
“Here at Pornhub, with more than 70 million daily visitors, we wanted to continue our concerted effort to maximize the privacy of our users, ensuring that what they do on our platform remains strictly confidential,” said Corey Price, the website’s vice president. “With the switch to [Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure] we are able to protect their identity as well as safeguard them against exposure to malware by third parties.”
PornHub officially switched to HTTPS on Thursday, while YouPorn will make the plunge on April 4. The websites, according to an announcement by the sister sites yesterday, are two of the most-visited sites worldwide. Among those top 100 sites, 11 are destinations for porn and other adult content, but only three — RedTube, Pornhub and YouPorn — will default to HTTPS.
“The data on our webpages will now be encrypted, making it significantly harder for third parties to penetrate,” said Brad Burns, YouPorn’s vice president. “Now, our community members can peruse our site even more safely, knowing they have that extra layer of security.”
So what’s this all mean to the average online porn consumer?
Websites that adopt HTTPS — ones with a green padlock in front of the URL — will give the user more peace of mind with encryption to keep data secure from third parties like internet providers, as well as protection against hackers and the assurance that the site is authentic.
“If you’re visiting sites that allow HTTPS, you don’t have to worry so much about what they’re doing to observe your traffic,” Joseph Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told WIRED.
Meanwhile, the White House on Wednesday announced that President Trump intends to repeal the Obama administration’s broadband privacy rules, which would have mandated that companies get consent from consumers before selling sensitive information like medical history and financial details to other firms.
“The market for internet users’ data is extremely opaque,” Peter Eckersley, chief computer scientist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Post. “ISPs are making billions of dollars every year by selling data about their customers, but we don’t know which ISPs, and how much they’re selling, and which kind of data is fetching the highest prices, because all those transactions are conducted in secret.”
On Tuesday, the White House explained in a blog post why Trump wants to overturn the Federal Communications Communication rule requiring broadband ISPs to get permission from customers before selling their personal information to third parties.
“In particular, the rule requires ISPs to obtain affirmative ‘opt-in’ consent from consumers to use and share certain information, including app usage and web browsing history,” the blogpost read. “It also allows ISPs to use and share other information, including email addresses and service tier information, unless a customer ‘opts-out.’ In doing so, the rule departs from the technology-neutral framework for online privacy administered by the Federal Trade Commission. This results in rules that apply very different regulatory regimes based on the identity of the online actor.”