It’s no secret that major websites track your clicking habits — anyone who has ever searched for a few fantasy purchases on Amazon has had to deal with the barrage of annoying product-specific emails (no, we’re not actually in the market for a $40,000 TV).
But as the expectation of privacy online is on a rapid decline, what does that mean for our more, shall we say, intimate browsing behaviors? And no, we don’t mean those searches for “how to plan the perfect date.”
Some web experts predict that our porn searches could likely be the next frontier of embarrassing (or in more dire cases for LGBT people, dangerous) personal data hacking.
“If you are watching porn online in 2015…you should expect that at some point your porn viewing history will be publicly released and attached to your name,” software engineer Brett Thomas writes in a recent blog post titled Online Porn Could Be The Next Big Privacy Scandal.
How about we take this to the next level?
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“In 2014 a set of celebrities had naked photos released to the public, a deeply disturbing event that was fantastically labeled ‘the fappening.’ Many people brushed off the episode – oh well, I’m not a celebrity,” he continues. “But I think the next big internet privacy crisis could expose the private and potentially embarrassing personal data of regular people to their neighbors…”
Considering that many LGBT people still live in areas where their sexual identity is a crime, the unmasking of adult searches could pose a threat that far exceeds embarrassment.
To be fair, in a statement to Vice, adult mega-site Pornhub called Thomas’ conclusions “not only completely false, but also dangerously misleading,” adding that, “Pornhub’s raw server logs contain only the IP and the user agent for a very limited time, never a browser footprint.”
Still, that’s just one response form one company, and Vice notes that 88 percent of the top 500 porn sites have tracking elements installed.
And if you think that browsing in “incognito mode” does you any good, think again.
“Incognito mode does virtually zero to stop this tracking, and at best your address bar won’t auto-complete to something embarrassing,” says privacy researcher Tim Libert. “But advertisers and data brokers still get the information. I have no idea what, if anything, they do with it—but it’s all sitting in a database somewhere.”
Thomas isn’t ultimately concerned about the potential threat, though it seems only because the stakes wouldn’t be very high if his private sexual desires were made public.
“Unfortunately anonymity is just fundamentally incompatible with Javascript and the open web,” he told Vice. “I’m perhaps fortunate that, were everybody’s porn preferences made public, mine would be on the less embarrassing side.”
Could the same be said of you?
Kyle DeBlasio
what the person who wrote the article fails to realize is that PORN companies are always in the forefront of tech development . read this article on CRACKED.com and see how Porn helped create the modern world and how it will help it in the future
Kyle DeBlasio
http://www.cracked.com/article_18888_5-ways-porn-created-modern-world.html
DarthKitsune
The same could not be said of me, not by a long shot. But on the other hand, who cares? The last time I used my real name on the internet was when I got a neopets account in the seventh grade. Besides, isn’t browsing porn what proxy servers were invented for?
Daniel Richards
This is new news how…?
Dakotahgeo
Personally, I could give an airborne fornication what the government sees that I do or see. It just proves they’re as perverted as I am, maybe more!
MarionPaige
As we speak, there is a guy publishing a businessman’s name to the net associating that business man with gay adult, the allegedly hiring of gay adult performers and lately the alleged rape of a gay adult performer.
mikehipp
Don’t be ashamed of your sexuality and don’t be ashamed of the porn you consume. If you’re not ashamed, their firepower is taken away. Own it, own the power.
MarionPaige
cut back a little on the Oprah
Jason Carbino
Vdfd.
TrueWords
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M
Captain Obvious
Nothing is private anymore and people aren’t above using embarrassing information against you if and only if you let it bother you. The internet has basically become high school but everyone thinks they’re sitting at the “popular” table so they need someone to pick on which is basically everyone else.
Just look at the way people talk to each other online now. I’m guilty of it myself… even down to googling someone’s username to slap his fetish list across his face to win a random anonymous argument. Not proud which is why I can admit it. Haven’t done it again since. Didn’t make me feel better, didn’t explain why I cared to get into the argument with some anonymous person I’ve never met, and wasn’t worth the energy.
The internet has become quite toxic and the only thing you can really do is disconnect or take the lumps that come with the new rapidly growing animosity flying in all directions.
Forget celebrities, it won’t be long before an average person’s entire diary of their private interests is up for grabs in an attempt to ruin their real life. Just got finished reading about a blog writer who got mixed up with a bunch of hackers who are trying to ruin her life by spreading information and embarrassing rumors to people in her real life via phone and internet.
Fang
The timing of this article is perfect because I just watched Sarah Silverman’s HBO stand up special where she beginby talking about keywords of her nightly porn searches: “gang bang”, “cum”, “amateur”, and “high five”. Ha! If only my searches were that mild.
Paul Dettmann
If the NSA wants to watch “Uniformed officer gets his pig bottom wrecked” with me I am perfectly ok with that.
imperator
Here’s the thing– I really wonder how much longer blackmail about anyone’s perversions (except for the illegal stuff like pedophilia) is going to be all that effective. Twenty, thirty, fifty years ago, our sexual taboos and the prospect of strangers knowing about ours had more coercive power over us– because according to “The One Standard” of “polite society” they weren’t fit for disclosing. Nowadays that “One Standard” is just *one* standard– increased communication proliferating the concepts of relativism, multiculturalism, libertarianism, and post-modernism in “the information age” have all applied a pressure (no, I won’t call it “downward” pressure) towards more ‘brash’ openness, more ‘vulgar’ pride, more fearless disclosure than our parents and grandparents are used to. With time everything’s being dragged, not quite kicking-and-screaming, out into the open and put on display and those exposing themselves are rejecting the judgments of others as uselessly puritanical.
In less flowery language, at the rate young people are sexting and tweeting their every thought and posting embarrassing pictures and sharing everything, sometime in the next few decades as we start looking for replacement ‘leaders’ in the public sphere we’re gonna’ *have* to “get over” a lot of what we used to find scandalous and shameful. We’re going to have no choice in the matter. Nobody will be able to afford to care if someone’s into getting walked on a leash, or if they have a foot fetish, or if they’ve been in an orgy, because so many skeletons will be out of their respective closets that *nobody* will appear “clean.” And that’s fine, because all we’re losing is the veneer– the falseness that came from secrecy. I’d dare say most of us have *some* kind of perversion… the era of social media’s going to demand that the perverts get our day and be treated not-so-differently than we were before we were “out,” because like with gay people, we were always here and being known doesn’t change *us.*
Goforit
To hell with the government. It’s my husband that I do not want to have access to my browsing history.
Bauhaus
@Goforit:
As is the case for most folks.
Daniepwils
Who cares?
Most people watch porn, they would be lying if they said they didn’t. Most personal internet use is one of two things, social media sites and PORN…
Maude
Second only to the actual participation in a sex act, porn is a natural inclination
that can no longer ever be denied….because like masturbation, it’s so damned available!
Captain Obvious
@imperator: I think it’s better to have a happy medium rather than either extreme.
People should have a right to privacy and everyone should be free to explore their sexual kinks but have the sense to leave some mystery amongst the general population.
There’s no reason to walk down the street with a whip and chains… or even post that somewhere that everyone can see it. And remember that’s a double edged sword in itself because you have to then accept the fetishes that completely turn you off personally as now being public information aired freely. I’ve already seen people even in my own generation snapping selfies of their kink in public places and posting it on Tumblr. I don’t really think it’s ok to start delving into exhibition just to explore yourself sexually. At least it should be reserved for events geared to that sort of thing.
On the other side Big Brother needs to back the hell off and go away. Nothing about our private lives should be available to anyone but us unless we deem otherwise. They’re called private lives for a reason. The government, hackers, “hacktivists”, and others who start delving into people’s personal information are in the wrong. It’s no ok and at some point they’re going to mess with the wrong person(people) and everyone will start fighting back. Even if the fight just forces everyone to do away with the internet altogether and go back to real life we still win because then we can take away all of their “power” over us and there really won’t be an extortion.
Bob LaBlah
I stopped commenting on the LATimes.com website when it was required that you sign in thru Facebook. The same with the Miami Herald. To this day I still feel it no ones business what I say on the internet except the site that I happen to be on.
I always delete my cookies when I get off of the net everyday. No exceptions. I still don’t believe this frees me up from being tracked but I feel better doing it. When websites start this “third party” requirement (google, Facebook, yahoo, flickr…. ) from entrance I will be off the net for good.
Bob LaBlah
@Bob LaBlah: When websites start this “third party” requirement (google, Facebook, yahoo, flickr…. ) from entrance I will be off the net for good.”
I meant to say for entrance, not from entrance.
ait10101
once in while I get a gay porn ad that seems to have been targeted at me. Much more I get pictures of big boobs on my screen. This happened once while I was browsing in a colleague’s office. He was interviewing a young woman at the time. I shut down the page as fast as I could because I was worried about possible sexual harassment repercussions. As I had said to one young woman who had tried to influence my behaviour by saying she would accused me of rape, “this was not gong to go very far”. Nonetheless, it is nuisance.
cvdixon29
I really don’t care who knows what sites I go to. If they want to take the time to monitor the porn sites I go to, then they must have one boring life.
David Russo
The government is going to get an EYEFUL when they check out MY searches!