Whether it's xvideos, pornhub, or redtube – there's an abundance of supposedly free porn sites on the internet. However, consuming naked skin, sexy videos, and porn is by no means free. As a visitor to these websites, you always pay, and you pay with your data. Because porn sites are at the forefront when it comes to spying on their visitors' behavior. Whatever men or women click on, search for, or consume on porn sites: the site operators know it and sell this information to advertising companies like Google, Facebook, and Co. And every now and then, the data also ends up with hackers who are extremely creative in devising lucrative blackmail schemes with this data. But you have ways to defend yourself against spying porn sites…
Spying Porn Sites – What's So Bad About Them?
Admittedly, a site operator who merely documents search and click behavior on a porn site and sells this data to "reputable" advertisers initially sounds "less threatening" than malware that activates a user's laptop camera or webcam while consuming porn, records a video, and then starts blackmail attempts – something that has also happened before, as you can read here.
Brazen Method: PsiXbot Malware Films Users While Consuming Porn
Nevertheless, every user will certainly answer this question differently. Most people in this country probably find it embarrassing and uncomfortable when (quite unexpectedly) an advertisement or an image from a porn site pops up – especially if it explicitly discusses sexual preferences or the advertisement even suggests that one is already a regular visitor to a certain site. For teenagers, it would certainly be very embarrassing if mom, dad, or a good friend saw these ads.
It becomes sensitive and potentially dangerous in cultures/countries where certain sexual preferences (e.g., homosexuality or another fetish) are suppressed or not tolerated. If the "wrong people" then happen to see the advertisements or various nude images, it can become uncomfortable, and the potential for blackmail increases. Girls and women, in particular, are affected by this in many countries and should ideally never be caught consuming porn.
Beware of Hackers and Blackmailers
Hackers and cybercriminals recognized early on that a lot of money can be made from sex and shame. And so, information about search and click behavior on porn sites repeatedly finds its way to dubious platforms. After all, this data is an excellent basis for large-scale blackmail attempts and can be sold well.
How Porn Sites Spy on Their Visitors
Every browser is individual. This starts with personal settings and includes all installed plug-ins, fonts, toolbars, histories, and other extensions with which a user has customized their browser. Website operators can capture this information using tracking tools. Even with the browser's incognito mode, you are not protected from spying porn sites.
Through this individual browser fingerprint combined with the assigned IP address, identification of the user afterwards is easily possible. Which films a visitor watches, which search queries they enter, how long they spend where... all of this is evaluated.
To prevent conclusions and protect yourself from spying porn sites, you would therefore have to do two things:
- use a "virgin" browser that you only use for such purposes. (Don't forget to regularly and thoroughly clean browser cache and cookies.)
- choose to access the relevant sites via a VPN connection or the Tor network.
If you want to surf the web as securely, undisturbed, and unobserved as possible, you should therefore absolutely surf via a VPN network. If you then also pay attention to your choice of browser and clean it regularly, you will surf securely and anonymously.
