In the grand scheme of things, there certainly are more important facets to online privacy than keeping one’s porn habits private (government overreach, identity theft, credit card fraud to name a few). However, adult browsing histories are one of the secrets in their online lives people want to protect the most, so it might be disconcerting to know that porn browsing is not as private as one might think. A large majority of web users are lulled into a false sense of security by incognito mode or private browsing, but this is only one of the steps needed toward becoming private online.
Here are a few people who have access to this info, along with a few easy tips that can be taken to prevent this from happening.
1. Anyone on the same hotspot
No one is suggesting you should watch porn at your local coffee shop (in fact, please don’t). However, what people surf in places like the privacy of their hotel room should probably stay there. With that in mind, the following statement might be more than a little disconcerting: What you do on Wi-Fi can be usually be seen by pretty much anyone connected to that hotspot. It doesn’t require great hacking skills to see what other people connected to the same network are doing. Only traffic on encrypted websites starting with https is always secure, and almost no adult sites fall under this category.
2. Foreign web service providers
When travelling, it’s easy to forget that what might be culturally acceptable in one country can land you in hot water with the authorities in another. Whether on public Wi-Fi or roaming on the network of a foreign internet service provider, they may be bound by law to report anyone surfing adult material. The personal freedom we enjoy to surf anything we want online is so second nature to many of us by now, we easily forget the same isn’t true for others.
3. Analytics and advertisers (often one and the same)
It might not be too surprising to hear that most companies aren’t exactly jumping at the chance to be associated with adult websites. For this reason, networks that serve ads to adult websites don’t serve ads to “normal” websites, making porn sites mostly self-contained when it comes to using your private information for advertising purposes. Unfortunately, your adult browsing can still be connected to you. Many adult websites implement analytic services, as well as “like” and “share” buttons, that feed into major advertisers such as Google and Facebook.
4. Your employer (in the U.S. and many other countries)
Now, we are DEFINITELY not suggesting you watch naughty stuff at work. I mean, they call it NSFW for a reason. However, that doesn’t change the fact that in some countries, companies have an uncomfortable amount of rights to spy on their workers. It’s natural that employers don’t want their workers doing anything illegal, but you still have a right to privacy, even on a work network.
What are your options?
So what can you do to prevent privacy intrusions? The first and most obvious choice is to not supply any personal information to adult websites. A lot of porn sites require registration in order to comment on videos (if that’s your thing) or to view content in higher quality. Keeping a separate email address for adult websites is therefore highly recommended. The other obvious choice is to always have private browsing on, as this prevents cookie-based tracking and embarrassing browsing histories from being saved on your computer.
A slightly more technical but still very easy tip is to disable JavaScript from your browser settings while surfing adult websites. A lot of websites don’t function without JavaScript, but all the adult websites we tried for research purposes work just fine. JavaScript makes it much easier to do something called device fingerprinting. This frustratingly intrusive method of snooping involves the use of scripts to identify your computer based on variables such as your screen size, operating system and number of installed fonts. It might not seem like it, but there are enough variables to make most devices in the world completely unique.
But the simplest and most efficient method of controlling your privacy is to use a VPN. A VPN (virtual private network) encrypts all your traffic, meaning no one is able to intercept it and see what sites you visit or what you download. It also hides your real IP address, the unique number which can easily be used to identify you online. A top-tier app like F-Secure VPN also contains extra features like anti-tracking to stop advertising networks from identifying you, and malware protection to automatically block web pages that contain malicious code. The app is easy to use and available on most platforms.
Online privacy is not a difficult or expensive goal to achieve, and by following these few steps you will be able to surf what you want without worry.
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