Pornhub goes dark in Arkansas after age verification law kicks in
theverge.com
Pornhub goes dark in Arkansas after age verification law kicks in::Pornhub operator MindGeek has blocked all users in Arkansas from the site after the state’s new age verification law went into effect.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Pornhub operator MindGeek has blocked all users in Arkansas from the site after the state’s new age verification law went into effect on Tuesday.
The Arkansas law, SB 66, doesn’t ban Pornhub from operating in the state, but it requires porn sites to verify that a user is 18 by confirming their age with identifying documents.
On Wednesday, Pornhub blocked all traffic from IP addresses based in Arkansas in protest, arguing that the law, which was intended to protect children, actually harms users.
“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk,” MindGeek wrote in a message replacing the site’s front page for affected users.
Responding to this wave of bans, MindGeek has decided to block access to its sites from states where the laws have gone into effect.
So, instead of rolling out age verification systems, it says it decided to block access entirely, calling on users to contact their state representatives to oppose these laws.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Good bot! I didn't know I missed having a summary until now
Having one in link posts really should be mandatory in the rules for most communities
I appear to be in the small minority, but I do not think we should be relying on an AI to summarize stories for us because the AI doesn't actually know what are important details.
On the other hand, having some people who read a summary that skips some important parts when they otherwise wouldn’t have read the article at all, might be worth the trade off it brings of people who would have read the article now reading an incomplete summary. The net amount of people who go into the comments more informed about the topic past whatever is in the headline would be decently higher, and personally I see that as one of the best ways to increase the quality of discussion overall.
Author of the bot here, so obviously biased, but the bot so far is doing really great at picking the important parts. And sure, it doesn't know, but it's really good at guessing and I dare say better than many actual people would be at picking 6 sentences to summarize the article.
Good bot
What is the expectation for compliance here? Are users supposed to scan their physical ID and upload that to PH, then PH checks age against that?
The bill says that commercial entities serving pornography are required to do age verification through either verifying a driver's license, verifying another piece of government-issued identification, or through the use of any commercially viable age verification mechanism.
So, yeah, I'd imagine compliance to look like either uploading a photograph or scan of an identity card or document for the site operators to check, or uploading it to an affiliated service which does age verification on their behalf.
Which is obviously horrendous from a privacy and information security standpoint for the consumer, and exposes the site operator to costs and legal risk associated with verifying and storing sensitive personal information.
Good bot
Arkansas: your kids should be working in a mine, not wanking online
Arkansas: where the people rule! (Until we, the ones decidedly ruling over the people, decide we don’t like what you’re doing and think it’s icky.)
Everyone in Arkansas is still watching their porn, from the pimply teenagers on up to the crotchety old politicians who came up with this shit.
It's all a political stunt so that the (significant) bloc of evangelical/social conservative voters in the state can feel like they got a win, and in turn they'll reelect the old white guys that signed it into law next fall.
Politicians get a win, evangelicals get a "win", and everybody keeps on watching exactly the same amount of Internet porn as they were before this law went into effect.
Oh no. I'm in Arkansas.
Guess I'll turn on the VPN.
I'm sorry.
I grew up there. The northern part of the state is honestly one of the prettiest parts of our country. It is also filled with some of the most vile people. Vile people from everywhere else go there to retire and add to the smegma pot.
You just described basically the whole south.
Hey! I'm from Texas and..... Fuck there's Mansfield.
Mansfield sounds a bit gay ngl
Not true. There are many shitty looking places in the south that don't attract remote retirees but are equally vile.
Good lord.
That phrase evokes quite the image.
It is a beautiful state, especially the part in the ozark mountains. But there is no way I could live there because of the people. It also lacks a single great city (Little Rock is a dump).
Why a dump? I thought it was a pretty decent place for living in, if it wasn't for the state.
Me too :( I hate it here (For reasons other than Pornhub)
I'm European so I don't know that much about stuff like this, but isn't it kinda easy to move from state to state in US?
It is. If you have money. Trust me, if I had the funds, I'd be somewhere different in a heartbeat.
It is, but with a few caveats that can make it outright impossible, largely down to financial issues.
From a legal standpoint, it's only slightly more annoying than moving from one town to another. You don't have to go through any sort of immigration process or anything, you just inform the state you're leaving and the state you're moving to of the change in address, and then get tax/identification stuff done like registering your car in the new state and getting an in-state driver's license.
Financially, the housing market is a mess in the US right now for a number of reasons, from the number of new houses being built not keeping up with population growth for like 60 years and many empty houses being in unlivable condition due to lack of maintenance, to many homes being owned by investment companies (and wealthy Chinese apparently) as basically a high yield savings account or bought up by companies and people turning them into rental property. And that's before you get into the logistics of moving your life to a new home.
Heh, sounds suspiciously similar to what's happening in my country. Except here it's wealthy Russians instead of wealthy Chinese. Seems the whole western world is the same kind of fucked when it comes to housing.
That’s putting it mildly
I recommend using Tor browser as an alternate option. For anybody who can't use a VPN or doesn't want to.
I'm not sure if streaming 1080p video over Tor would be very appreciated by the rest of the network. Or that it would be a very pleasant experience.
Do you always stream porn in 1080p? I guess I never thought about the quality, but I honestly don’t expect anything more than 720
Does the resolution really matter? I may be wrong, but I think nobody runs a Tor node, giving away their bandwidth for free and risking jail time, just so that some random dude in Arkansas can watch some porn.
Definitely not the right scenario for tor. If you dont care about your privacy and just want to see some titty boombom Fanny maracas then even the cheapest VPN would be a better experience.
Really though a decent VPN should something everyone has access to though anyway.
I think a vpn is simpler than tor personally. Also then videos gonna be buffering for a minute on tor lol
It's not "simpler" at all because it includes the step of paying. But, indeed, better for this application.
Not necessarily. Granted installing the Tor browser will set up the services/daemons and access to the appropriate ports in the background, but generally the Tor protocol has a lot more going on than a VPN.
Additionally a VPN can be had for free from certain services like ProtonVPN. It's not as fast as a paid VPN service, but during lower traffic times it'll suffice. Plus if you know how to torrent over a VPN, then you just download the vids that way and you don't need internet access every time you want to watch it.
This plus using CLI tools like yt-dlp on sites like pornhub, xhamster, etc, and you really start to realize how ineffective bullshit laws like these are for increasingly more technically savvy youths.
the step of paying? lol. i'm not sure that constitutes difficulty.
Nobody is going to prefer tor to a vpn.
I just use OperaGX's shitty free VPN if I need it. It works enough to get any vpn needed jobs done.
Very Pretty Neice/Nephew?
We sleep with our cousins here. Not our nieces or nephews. That's Alabama.
That's grim
So is the dating scene in Arkansas.
The party of small government.
For a party that prides itself on being all about "small government" and "no nanny state," this is some surprisingly big government nanny state shenanigans
The small government libertarian types were lowered in priority in the party after two decades of people pandering to them because there's basically nobody out there that's a fiscal conservative and a social liberal.
Trump and his grip on the GOP are evidence again of that same thing. There are more "conservatives" that are actually fiscal liberals and social conservatives than there are right libertarians.
The rich would (for the most part) love to get the tax breaks and allow people to do whatever they want socially, but that (and virtue signaling) are not enough to rile up the fascist voters and evangelicals anymore.
They've crossed the Rubicon with Trump and now it's full on censorship and other Nazi tactics to take us back to the good old (non-existent) days.
I’m just going to sit over here in my fiscally conservative and socially liberal corner.
(Although, I’m good with some level of safety nets still)
In fairness, this is a state law. States rights being part of the Republican platform during my childhood. Just another reason not to go to/live in Arkansas
Small government is allegedly still at part of the Republican platform at the state level. For a small government party, they sure do like to dictate what's going on in people's bedrooms.
This is interestingly why Democrats once performed better at the local level. There was a sizeable block that would split their ticket on state lines.
Republicans only cry States Rights when the federal government is attempting to make someone's life better or when they want to take something away
They cry states rights as a tactic because they can control some states. If they had a supermajority on the national level they'd be passing abortion bans, contraceptive bans, trans bans, and any number of other abhorrent piles of garbage through at the federal level.
Note how they give not a single shit about states rights to regulate firearms or allow abortions.
"just move"
You know, there is a reasonable reading of the comment that doesn't involve the assumption that they are telling people to move FROM Arkansas. Intentionally avoiding visiting the state, and intentionally avoiding relocating there, are quite different than the standard "LEAVE THE STATE" comment.
Who in their right mind would expect a free porn site to go to this level of hassle?
Or is this a puritanical measure in disguise?
It's the second one. I saw article where they talked how Florida was the first to pass it, pornhub put time and money into developing what they needed to comply and saw a 90% decrease in traffic because nobody wants to hand over their ID for free porn.
Wouldn't even want to hand over my ID for a paid service.
It’s literally in the linked article lol
Pornhub would make more money simply starting a vpn service rather than try to gather IDs
They already do
Ohhhh fuck is it viewer's age verification.. I assumed it was the people in the porn... As if this is gonna stop horny kids from seeing porn
It's to stop people from watching porn, they don't care about kids.
yeah, the smart teenager is going to be charging the adults in his life $50 to get their porn working again.
Pretty sure PH already requires ID for people in porn. That's why they wiped half the uploads some years ago pending accounts verifying themselves.
When this happened in Utah a few months ago, Google searches for VPN increased in like over 1000%.
The best Free VPN IMO is ProtonVPN,
For a general user that just wants a comprehensive google replacement, proton unlimited at $12/mo is a pretty good deal. Comes with the VPN premium and a password manager (now).
I do not understand the need to have your passwords stored somewhere in the cloud. I'd better sync them by a wire if I had several devices, not like passwords change every day. And there are cheaper VPNs out there with better reputation.
It’s not like they are plaintext, and increased availability/ redundancy would be one potential reason for deciding to have a cloud synced password manager database.
There are other solutions that you can self host or create yourself, and if that works better for you and your use case, I encourage it.
Especially since PornHub has an excellent point. Even though they theoretically could do an ID check, the sketchier porn sites simply wouldn't. All these laws would do is push minors to use more dangerous porn sites. They're not going to not watch porn just because the big, law abiding site checks IDs.
I don’t think it’s especially disguised…
VPN industry lobbyists disguised as morality crusaders if you like tin foil hats as much as I do. Most likely not though, just people who feel the need to control how others spend their time and precious bodily fluids.
Didn't read the bill cause pdf and cause it's a bill, but found another article describing it, and it says at the end:
Isn't that like 99% of the internet?
Why are you against Pdf files?
Edit: Though reading my question out loud I get it...
(Are we anti postscript document format now? Did I miss a haters meeting??)
"Now?"
PDF files have been widely hated for as long as they have existed. They're good for printing and not much else. Definitely not a user-friendly substitute for a text file or web page.
The are a requirement for distributing a document that has to look the same on every device. I don't love them and Adobe can go take a flying fuck but if I NEED to make sure that my boss doesn't alter a document it has to be a PDF.
Just don't like opening on phone, my browser doesn't open, so it asks to download, then i end up with a bunch of random useless files there. Don't u skip search results that lead to pdfs?
Pdfs are like the best for reading. Consistent format on every device.
They just suck to create or edit.
They suck to edit but you can create them in most Free/Open/Libre software. It's my favorite way to distribute drawings so that they print the same on every machine.
I actively search for them, moonreader catalogs everything. Having about half a TB on the phone file system also helps, but to be fair, since 2016 I never have filled any phone file system in a meaningful way
Sounds like all online games too
Things you aren't legally allowed to do in Arkansas: watch porn, have an abortion, read, write, or wipe your ass.
I get the impression not a lot of people were reading, writing, or wiping there even when it was legal.
Dang, if kids just had some kind of guardians that would be responsible for their media consumption while every media device out there had basic functionality to support such supervision.
It is completely unrealistic to control kids media consumption after a certain age without also infringing on their rights to privacy. Basically, you can't do it right as a parent. You are either helicopter parenting or you aren't controlling enough. It's funny how we shift blame entirely to parents on this while ignoring that it's an impossible task. And I am not even a parent.
It's not hard to talk to your kids about porn or the existence of sex. Masturbation is ok and natural.
I think unhealthy sexual behavior comes from denying that masturbation and sex are perfectly normal and healthy activities. It's important as a parent to let your kids know about the potential risks (STDs, pregnancy, porn addiction) and to educate on consent. Give your kids a roadmap and advice, but don't blanket ban or shame and they should be healthy about sex.
It needs to be done at school. Sex is a part of lives (we don't have more humans without it.) By teaching kids about sex (in an age approprate way) they can learn how to have sex responsibilty, how to see the signs that someone has ill intentions (no one touches you there without permission etc...), as well as the importance of consent. Teens are going to have sex so we might as well prepare them for it.
You will all go blind.
/s
Well, except the traditional parents don’t think that way or just won’t do it, so saying that doesn’t matter in the cultural context. I don’t think there’s a solution to that except moving to a place more aligned with our values.
Was that supposed to be a reaction to my comment? I was talking about expecting parents to supervise all and every media consumption of their children.
Healthy, open discussion contributes to a reduced need for parental controls and monitoring, but paired together parents have more than enough to help their kids develop into fully functioning humans.
You make it sound like without strict monitoring 24/7 kids will turn into porn addicts and lose all sense of all other facets of life.
The problem is that far right Catholic types won't touch the subject on a personal level, and will try to abuse government to save themselves from what shouldn't be but is an uncomfortable conversation.
?? Where do I make it sound like that?
Every phone and computer has parental control options that allow for as much control as you feel necessary. And obviously as you kids gets older you have to trust in your upbringing - but that's also completely on you, to teach your kids to deal with modern media.
I’ve been using the parental controls to lock out FOX and other crap.
Sucks to suck.
No, not every phone and computer has parental control options. What about the PCs at libraries and schools? What about older siblings? Other students? Friends of the kid? It's completely unrealistic to claim parents should just supervise every media usage.
People also aren't robots where you put "upbringing" in and get predictable results. You can teach them all you want, unless you completely ignore all privacy rights of your children, you won't be able to control their media consumption.
Which one don't have one? And even if there are few - it's not hard to get one with for your kids.
Even in my day and age we had restricted access to things on our school pc - learning to get around it was the only useful thing I learned in those classes. But here the same, there are software solutions to control access on local machines.
What about them? They all also have parents or people responsible for them.
Because they should not. They should teach children to use media and gradually trust them more and more to make their own decisions. Like with everything else.
And as I said, you should not -you should teach them and then learn to trust them - that's hard part of being a parent, you don't have control over your childs life.
No real side in this debate because I don't have kids and am basically an anti-natalist but I don't think it's terribly important to control kids media access above a certain age anyway.
It's probably important to prevent them from accidentally seeing irrelevant filth, and may make sense to prevent them from accessing certain stuff before they're ten or eleven. But I had near unfettered access to the wild world of the Internet from a young age and I don't think it made a big negative difference.
I personally think it was important to my development to be able to explore things on my own terms in the relatively safe way of accessing pages on the Internet.
I do think, however, that social media is likely riskier than media consumption for children in certain age groups, but most parents seem to be a-ok with their kids mainlining that and worried instead that they may accidentally see a nipple.
The ones I mentioned directly after... Please, do not quote out of context.
I feel like people miss the context of the original content and put words in my mouth. I was referring to the claim that parents can "simply" supervise, and should supervise, all media consumption of their children. Which I argue is impossible without infringing on the children's rights of privacy.
It's like people misinterpret my point with intent. Or there is a huge language barrier I can not comprehend.
You can not supervise every media consumption of your children. That is all I wanted to say. I didn't even comment upon whether or not and how good it works (or not) to teach your children about responsible media consumption. That's a whole different topic.
So none. All devices have the capability to control access.
But that whole conversation is in context of governmental control vs. parental control. In my opinion governmental control infringes much more on everyones rights in this case. So obviously your statement is interpreted in this context, not in vacuum.
Parents do not have access to parental control on devices of other children, other adults, school, libraries, etc.
Do you think the same way about physical media? Like, do you think we should be letting kids buy porn magazines? Or that it should be legal for someone to wait outside a school and hand kids porn as they walk home?
Pretty sure it's already illegal to distribute porn online to kids.
In other, unrelated news, VPN’s are experiencing an unexpected spike in traffic. More at 5.
I don't understand why they use pornhub, it's so much easier for them to get actual sex with their favorite dating app: 23andme.
23.5andme
Do Arkansans have a reputation for inbreeding ?
I wanna see over the next year how rape and sexual harassment rates change.
Oh man, if only we had statistics from countries where porn is banned, or some sort of scientific study from multiple countries where porn was banned and then unbanned to see what the change was...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.htm
Spoiler: They'll probably go up slightly.
Not sure what the spirit is behind this comment, but for all the cases that could be made in advocacy for porn, I don't think this should be one. If porn is the only thing keeping rape cases from drastically increasing, there is something much more broken in our society, and access to porn won't fix that.
Edit: Holy shit, guys. I thought poor reading comprehension and inflammatory dog-piling was something that wouldn't be so commonplace, after moving here from Reddit. Where did I say I support anything about what these pieces of legislation are enforcing? Every single response I've gotten so far has been arguing different points of discussion, of which my comment has nothing to do with. All I said was "GIVE THE RAPISTS THEIR PORN SO WE CAN BE SAFE!!!" isn't exactly a strong angle to approach the issue from. One user is even sharing a study that includes data showing that giving pedophiles access to child pornography reduces rates of sexual assault with children. Like, no shit, but is the lack of child pornography really the core issue at that point? Don't bother replying to me if you just want to put words in my mouth, and assume my stances on topics which I so far haven't shared.
The spirit is quite clearly that rape and abuse numbers will likely go up slightly anywhere porn is banned.
Nobody said "drastically."
Holy shit I never thought I'd get to use line before.
"Anyway, walk to your cars in pairs tonight. Rape's up 8 percent"
Do you lock your door at night or when you leave? You shouldn't have to, but you currently need to. So it would be stupid not to.
You'd rather rape rates be higher because the knob we know we can turn is slightly distasteful?
Edit: GP is a coward and edited their comment rather than try to defend their pro-rape stance.
No spirit at all. Genuinely want to see if / how these change.
I have a feeling they wont.
Well, that basically is an age check. People of Arkansas are obviously not old enough to deal with porn when they support a government that produces such stupid laws.
Won't someone think of the horny Arkansans?
Seriously the Republicans are beyond the pale.
Reps are using The Handmaid's Tale as an instruction manual.
Arkansawns? While pronounceable, I don't think that is the correct way to personify that word.
I'm leaning towards Arkansinians
We usually say Arkansan.
Source: Am Arkansan
Well that was my best guess haha.
Freedum loving repubeicans inbound to other states?
They already go to the more liberal states for their abortions and their weed. Might as well download some porn while on the dispensary wifi.
Is this a scheme of VPN providers? Do they pay off politicians?
There are still tons of porn sites that don't give a fuck about those state laws and don't comply. No VPN needed, just browse to an unblocked site.
They can't force compliance of foreign hosts anyway
I remember reading about this before. This is so stupid. Making people verify with offical documents.. People are going to get their documents stolen so much more now. Nice job Arkansas!
i thought american don't have ID card? what kind document is official document?
They do like every other country..
You mean that every American citizen is automatically issued a photocard ID free of charge after they reach a certain age?
Because that's how it works in most of Europe for example. Some countries mandate that you must carry it at all times in case the police requires you to identify yourself. You use this card to vote, and you can also travel freely within the EU with it (loads of people don't even own a passport for this reason).
You can 100% get and ID in the US (might be state dependant but all states i've lived in have had this option) that is not a drivers license. It looks similar but you just cant drive with it. It can be used for anything else like buying alcohol or as a governemnt id for something. I dont think theres a fee either, if there is its like $20 for the paperwork. And it is not just issued. You do have to go to the dmv or something.
Where in Europe is that? Not in Austria. Passports, driver's licenses and personal identity cards all cost money. For a long time my only ID card was my passport, so I used that to vote, but now I have a driver's license.
You might be right about this one. I myself don't have a ID-card but use my bank card as identification.
I think we've lost thr plot a bit. Yes, the US is one of thr only countries without a national ID, but that's sort of beside the point.
Whatever ID you onr is forced to use, national or not,, the issue is the state tyrannically policing teens behavior.
IDs cost money in Germany, you definitely aren't required to have it on you (but most do because it's in the wallet), and technically you aren't even required to have one you're only required to have an official identifying document which can also be a passport. Or, if you're an alien, well, passport, or residency permit. Any Schengen one probably works.
Oh and IDs aren't required to vote, you usually just show them the piece of paper they sent you to tell you when and where to vote. Push come to shove and things being suspicious you have to "make believable" that you're you, and that also works with a student ID or whatever.
The UK does not require you to have any ID. it is not your job to prove who you are. this does lead to a number of interesting problems.
The government doesn't go out of it's way to give you one, but they usually aren't difficult to get. Driver's licenses and passports are commonly used as ID. Many states will also issue a state ID card, though the process for getting one varries by state.
Driving, or at least being able to drive, is so ubiquitous that nearly everyone over 16 has some kind of driver's license. That's especially true of rural areas like Arkansas.
For these kinds of things "official document" typically means a driver's license, passport, state ID, military ID, etc. Anything issued by a state or federal government that has your name, date of birth, and photo.
It's downright hypocritical that MindGeek has been outright supportive of the UK government's efforts to push age verification checks on porn and have even tried to lobby our country to implement AgeID as the solution.
But the moment US states start demanding that they verify user ages, they start geoblocking.
My knowledge on this is very limited and I currently lack sources, but I believe the issue that Mindgeek has is not the implementation of age verification, but instead the fact that all of the work is being put on Mindgeek to implement it instead of the states. I believe they've been fine in the past implementing age verification if the system already exists and they just have to tie into it.
I'm pretty sure their main issue is that they don't want to be the ones doing the age verification. Louisiana set up a state run verification system, and pornhub has continued to operate their site in the state. I don't want porn sites to have my ID info.
Didn't the company also previously claim they were unable to effectively combat child porn?
Classy lot.
No, they claimed they weren't able to let amateurs post and prevent child porn. So they took down an enormous amount of content.
Verification should be a 2fa letter with the logo on the envelope.
Request access to each video and wait for a letter with the title and thumbnail printed on the outside.
Thinking back to dialup times, this made me laugh.
Pornhub's site was already pretty dark. Like it's mainly black
Imagine using pornhub in light mode
God can't see you fap if you use light mode, mostly cause he's fucking blind.
Xhamster is now requiring personal identification for EVERYONE in the whole US, not just in Arkansas. WTF?!
Xhamster is probably the last site I would want my personal info related with too lmao
Loaded up fine for me!
Uhh what? No they're not
real chads are only using xnxx anyway
Alot of new VPN subs coming out of that state I bet.
That thumbnail looks like the underside of a shark.
It sorta of looks like the puffer fish eating a carrot meme. Bizarre.
Does anyone know if it gives HTTP code 451? Always wanted to see that
They went darkansas
From that day on, nobody ever Arkansas porn again :(
Hah. Got some MAGAt relatives in AR and I bet this directly affects them.
It's funny how they never expect the things they vote for to negatively impact their own lives, only other peoples lives.
The fact that they're surprised every time it happens is just sad, since it shows that they are literally delusional.
DON'T help them with VPN.
These tech companies leaving certain places to avoid regulation, while sucking up to censorship laws in Russia and the likes... They can shove it, if you ask me.
Sheesh! Now a twars Billy Bob gonna geet his sexual gratifications from now? His goat? She's plum wore out!
There are a couple words I don't understand here. Can you help me make sense of them ? it's twars and plum.
And what accent are you imitating here ? Arkansas ?
"plum wore out" is a phrase meaning "completely worn out." Twars I don't know. Where I'm from it would be more like "whar's billy bob gon git'is lovin from now?" Source: alabama
Watch o brother where art tho. It will give a great insight to the language of the south.
How do they know where you are to block you? IP location regularly locates my really far away from my actual location, like hundreds of kilometers away.
But you aren't living in Arkansas anyway - you know kilometers :-)
Well that’s a thumbnail lol
Not in Arkansas and not a porn consumer, but in this day and age how do you not already run thru a VPN or two?
Most people are technologically ignorant, friend
Well can I Helen Keller them and then knock smarts into them?
What kinda adult would care about your ISP knowing you watch porn?
VPNs are often over blown. Their ads will make it seem like they're some critical privacy thing, but these days virtually every website is encrypted (HTTPS). Your ISP can know the IP address you're visiting (and thus typically the site), but pretty much everything else, including what page you're viewing on the site, is known only to you and the site in question. VPNs had a lot more merit before HTTPS was ubiquitous.
They're still useful if you're visiting illegal sites or using peer to peer technology (most particularly illegal torrents), but that's not the case for many and certainly not for just viewing normal porn.
I'm lost here, why would you need a VPN running all the time?
Some people say that a VPN is like a tunnel.
This is actually incorrect. A VPN is actually like a condom.
So your ISP doesn't have logs on where you surf. I run 2 to 3 at a time. No one (I hope) knows what I'm doing.
VPNs have many uses, but I think it is overstated how much they provide in privacy. They can hide your public IP address, but your VPN provider still knows it (and you have to trust them that they won't keep all the information on you). And you can still be identified by your browser fingerprint which a VPN doesn't do anything about. Their encryption doesn't add much either, since most traffic on the web is already encrypted via TLS or SSL (when you use https sites).
They are however useful to access content that isn't available in all regions of the world, when all you need is to hide your ip (e.g. when pirating (i imagine most governments won't go through the effort to try figure out who is behind the vpn, but I'm not sure)), to allow you to access an institution's intranet from home, to allow playing LAN games with your friends when both of you are on different networks and behind a NAT, or in any other situation when you need to use the internet with another IP or need to route traffic to another network.
I have to ask, does a VPN really 100% anonymise everything? Like DNS and everything, so they can’t see the domains you access? Does this include the ISP but also the wifi router logs (for example on an open network)?
So the only way to find out anything is to raid the VPN offices and backtrack your real IP…?
It sounds like a too easy way to get away with anything online. 🤔
Privacy is a goal worth having in and of itself.
I can't believe there's still people on here in the current political climate saying things like "well I don't have anything to hide anyway, I don't care if evil corp / the state / any curious person knows my every move."
Well, I do care. It's none of their fucking business what I'm doing and what sites I'm visiting.
I agree 100%, I was just wondering about the technicalities - how much does using a VPN protect us.
As far as I know, the only person who has information on what you're browsing is the VPN provider. Your ISP would only see that you were connecting to the VPN, and how much data you were pushing and pulling from them but wouldn't even have the domain names of the things you were browsing, nor any packets that were actually exchanged.
The VPN provider could still have all of this information, but presumably not more unless you were doing a lot of stuff unencrypted or were using some weirdo middleware that could man in the middle your encrypted connections.
Very nice, thank you!
It may even speed up your connection.
Taken from information for end users of Swan Mobile:
There you may notice P2P being limted to 1Mbps and Video streaming to 2Mbps.
So... without VPN you can watch videos in like 360p. Oh, but it gets better, after you use 10GB on video streaming it drops to 1Mbps. So 240p? 💀
With VPN you just get the general FUP limit of 300GB without limits.
Well I rip and run, so streaming isn't my bag baby.
can t they just use a vpn lol
Brother, the general population in Arkansas is not even smart enough to change their Wi-Fi password, let alone use a VPN.
For some, but I doubt it for many. Average users don't even know what VPN is.
With the amount of ads I see for things like NordVPN or PIA openly advertising bypassing geo blocking I doubt many people haven't heard of them. (Those who haven't will soon hear about them from friends)
Add another fee to your monthly expenses.
As of right now, I heard you can use cellular data.
There are many options besides porn hub.
I search bing for naked booby. I get trillion results.
Joining Utah and Virginia
And Louisiana
Oh no, anyway
Pornhub is kinda shit now anyway. Not a big loss.
And the world was all the better
Can't believe the coomers here are defending a company that profits from non-consensual porn and facilitates child pornography.
Can't believe someone whose user name is inspired by Nietzsche is toeing the line for Christian misinformation and spreading their talking points while simultaneously misunderstanding how content moderation works in the real world.