8 ms·

Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites

348 points by interweb 7y ago

homakov 7y ago
What does porn have to do with sex though?
octosphere 7y ago
> This paper explores tracking and privacy risks on pornography websites. Our analysis of 22,484 pornography websites indicated that 93% leak user data to a third party. Tracking on these sites is highly concentrated by a handful of major companies, which we identify. We successfully extracted privacy policies for 3,856 sites, 17% of the total. The policies were written such that one might need a two-year college education to understand them. Our content analysis of the sample's domains indicated 44.97% of them expose or suggest a specific gender/sexual identity or interest likely to be linked to the user. We identify three core implications of the quantitative results: 1) the unique/elevated risks of porn data leakage versus other types of data, 2) the particular risks/impact for vulnerable populations, and 3) the complications of providing consent for porn site users and the need for affirmative consent in these online sexual interactions.
thanatropism 7y ago
Possibly relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profumo_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profumo_affair
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  how is that in any way related to the article?
bitxbitxbitcoin 7y ago
Looks like everyone - vulnerable population or not - should be using VPN when viewing pornographic content.[1] [1] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/07/why-you-need-to-use-a-vpn-to-stop-google-and-facebook-from-tracking-your-porn-habits/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/07/why-you-n...
- andrepd 7y ago
  s/pornographic content/any content/g
- craftyguy 7y ago
  While I don't disagree with using a VPN as you suggest, I would be wary of using an advertisement by a VPN company as a supporting source for that claim.
  - liability 7y ago
    I think if you use a VPN that doesn't have any of your personal information of file for billing or infrastructure purposes (like your residential ISP does) then at the very least the shady logging VPN will have a dossier on you that doesn't include your name, street address, bank or credit card numbers, etc. Even if the VPN is otherwise a bunch of Mafia scum datamining you as hard as they can, you're still better off than if you were raw-dogging on Comcast. However I think those VPN companies that throw around suspicious abouts of cash advertising all ask for credit cards or similar. I would never do business with one of them, it's pointless. I also hate NordVPN's YouTube advertising campaign in particular, in which they pay YouTube creators to mislead their audience. Suggesting among other things that connections to your bank's website are unencrypted if you aren't using a VPN.
- CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
  VPNs don't help here. https://panopticlick.eff.org https://panopticlick.eff.org https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29
  - fragsworth 7y ago
    According to panopticlick, Chrome is 100% secure in incognito mode.
    - some_furry 7y ago
      That's really cool! Who knew Chrome was doing so well? The second article CiPHPerCoder linked seems to be more focused on the VPN marketing aspect. A more interactive approach might be https://faq.dhol.es/@Soatok/cryptography/which-vpn-service-will-protect-me-from-hackers https://faq.dhol.es/@Soatok/cryptography/which-vpn-service-w...
bfirsh 7y ago
Here's an HTML version if you're on a phone: https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1907.06520/ https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1907.06520/
meruru 7y ago
The hentai sites I tend to use are pretty good in this regard I think. Most of them even work with no JS. E.g. https://danbooru.donmai.us https://danbooru.donmai.us https://e-hentai.org https://e-hentai.org Edit: I tried visiting them without adblock and I'm actually surprised they didn't even have ads.
- scanny 7y ago
  God forbid someone mis-clicks while browsing this thread at work
- posix_compliant 7y ago
  In case it wasn't already abundantly clear, all of these links are not safe for work.
  - meruru 7y ago
    Ah, yes. Hentai means cartoon pornography.
- hnaccy 7y ago
  e-hentai is EOL if you weren't aware.
  - meruru 7y ago
    I know, but I'll stick to it until a proper successor appears. nhentai.net and hitomi.la recompresses images and I want to be able to archive the originals easily.
- the8472 7y ago
  Note that both sites also host non-pornographic content and on danbooru it's the dominant kind.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Those are good sites. But cartoon porn with underage characters is illegal in some countries. And marginally so in the US, depending on attitude of the prosecutor. Also, I've come across some cartoon porn sites that are too disturbing to even risk describing here. Violence per se isn't so illegal, but underage sex + violence may well be.
wruza 7y ago
At least it serves its main goal. Youtube is far behind with their stupid suggestions than any major porn aggregator.
- scanny 7y ago
  To be fair, Youtubes content is significantly more diverse and harder to classify than what these aggregators deal with.
kingkawn 7y ago
I've assumed (without evidence, only deduction) since the 90s that every pornographic thing anyone has ever looked at has been recorded for future blackmail use against social rebellions.
- shostack 7y ago
  I wouldn't be shocked if we have a mass kompromat attack trying to coerce people into doing something based on some porn site analytics data. Paired with god knows what Cambridge Analytica had at their disposal, it probably wouldn't be too difficult.
- Raphmedia 7y ago
  It might be my age demographic but everyone I know is very open with their choices of pornography and I have the link to several of my friend's favorite lists and playlists. There are also shared accounts of paid websites going around and we can see the "recently watched" lists. There shouldn't be any shame to pornography unless you are consuming illegal content. Unless you are a content creator and wish to keep your personal and online life separated, there's not much of a blacklist potential.
  - pessimizer 7y ago
    I agree, but millennials have no power, there's the potential that what they've done (while being tracked and recorded every moment of their lives) could be used to blacklist the entire generation by zombie boomers and their xer children. They've already come of age during a ruined economy, this could just be another strike. Xers will live long enough that they could skip most of the millennials in favor of their kids, who may take their parents' experiences as a cautionary tale and be more careful and contrived about their public faces (I think there's ample evidence of this wariness.)
    - Raphmedia 7y ago
      > but millennials have no power Millennials are up to 38 years old in 2019.
johnedwards 7y ago
Some friends noted that this had been up on HN for three hours with no comments. So I decided to read the paper and note some highlights. > What Jack does not know is that incognito mode only ensures his browsing history is not stored on his computer. e sites he visits, as well as any third-party trackers, may observe and record his online actions. > ‘30% of all the data transferred across the internet is porn,’ with site YouPorn using six times more bandwidth than Hulu (Kleinman, 2017) > Herein, we take such a ‘sex positive’ view of porn and access to online pornography. While acknowledging the many racist, misogynistic, heteronormative and other problematic histories and themes in pornography and its production, distribution and consumption, our work recognizes the ubiquity and permanence of porn and its many uses and social functions, and the danger of societal, state, and institutional narratives that might work to discipline gender and sex. > To identify third-parties found on a given website we used the webXray software platform. webXray 'is a tool for analyzing thirdparty content on web pages and identifying the companies which collect user data’ (webXray, 2018) > We used four coders from diverse backgrounds: one primary researcher and three volunteers. Three coders were women (one identifed her sexuality as fluid; the others as queer), and one was a heterosexual man. > Coders were instructed to code Presence for: ‘Any word or phrase that indicates or suggests the porn content will feature a specifc gender or sexual identity, orientation, or preference,’ and/or ‘Any word or phrase that indicates or suggests the porn content will feature a specifc sexual focus, body part or type, identity or character (like race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, profession), act, fetish, interest, porn genre, porn trope, etc. >Our March 2018 analysis successfully examined 22,484 sites drawn from the Alexa list of one million most popular websites where the URL, page title, or page description includes ‘porn.’ We found third-party tracking is widespread, privacy policies are difficult to understand and do not disclose such tracking, and third-parties may often be able to infer specifc sexual interests based solely on a site URL. > We identified 230 different companies and services tracking users in our sample. Such tracking is highly concentrated by a handful of major companies, some of which are pornography-specifc. Of non-pornography-specifc services, Google tracks 74% of sites, Oracle 24%, Facebook 10%, Cloudflare and Yadro 7%, and New Relic and Lotame 6%. Porn-specific trackers in the top ten are exoClick (40%), JuicyAds (11%), and EroAdvertising (9%). > Based on a random sample, 44.97%of porn site URLs expose or strongly suggest the site content includes or targets one or more specific gender or sexual: identities or orientations, and/or topic(s) of interest/focus. > We contend that the tracking of online porn consumption represents an even riskier violation of privacy, in line with Citron’s (2019:1870,1881) argument that: "Sexual privacy sits at the apex of privacy values because of its importance to sexual agency, intimacy, and equality. We are free only insofar as we can manage the boundaries around our bodies and intimate activities… It therefore deserves recognition and protection, in the same way that health privacy, financial privacy, communications privacy, children’s privacy, educational privacy, and intellectual privacy do." > For example, same-sex relations between consenting adults are criminalized in 70 United Nations member states, with punishments ranging from imprisonment to death (Fox et al., 2019). Thee consequences of sexual privacy violations in such contexts would clearly be severe. Even in societies with less regulation around sex, breaches of sexual privacy often have bodily stakes > Porn website privacy policies are long, dense, difficult to understand, and only 11% of the third-parties observed tracking users on a given page are listed in the policy, leaving users ignorant of which organizations may be assembling catalogues of their perceived sexual interests Edit: I have been adding to this comment as I read the study. I do have other things to do today.
pessimizer 7y ago
Mindgeek runs all of the biggest porn sites, and also runs its own ad network. Since the biggest of those sites are their "tube" sites, they run into the same issues as youtube when it comes to tracking individual tastes. Since the product is porn, which is very easily classifiable with a list of the physical features of actors (with maybe a few behavioral distinctions), the actors in the video, how they are matched ("how" doing a lot of heavy lifting here) and possibly director, producer, and age of content, it would be easy for them to have a very specific dossier on all users. Moreover, it would be financially beneficial, because it'd be easy to maximize engagement with that stuff and a past record of engagement time, and that information would also aid conversions to their other paysite products (of which there are many.) The fact that they run so many paysites probably means they can associate specific sexual tastes (and schedules) with a credit card number. Mindgeek have also shown themselves to be extremely savvy technologists, so this stuff is probably already being done. If it's your own ad network, is it really a third party, though? The plethora of domains does give the user the impression that they're leaving one business and moving to another, when it's really more akin to switching rooms. example of unexpected situation: I used a credit card to join vanillanormalromance.com, but I watch weird stuff on redtube. ----- edit: for some reason it didn't occur to me, but there would clearly be an interest to sell these categories to other porn sites, facebook-style, generating even more info from people not on Mindgeek sites. I feel like I remember a few Mindgeek/Manwin devs being good HN posters.
- jedberg 7y ago
  I’ve met their head of data science. They’re doing all that stuff and have been for many years. Porn has always been leaders in technology. They were the first to embrace home video and can arguably be credited for VHS winning over BetaMax despite being inferior, because it was cheaper and all the porn was VHS only.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - edgarvaldes 7y ago
    >can arguably be credited for VHS winning over BetaMax This is something that is always mentioned, but sometimes I wonder if it is not a myth, or a simple exaggeration or simplification.
jstewartmobile 7y ago
Between Stormy Daniels, "grab 'em by the p", and Epstein's community service for pedophilia, perhaps we are living in a post-blackmail era? NXVIM, pizzagate, Weinstein, Epstein, the Catholic Church--all I see now are echoes of Elizabeth Bathory and feudalism.
tdy721 7y ago
I always liked how thepiratebay.org seemed to make that tracking really transparent. Visit that site on a machine and observe the advertising. It’s not the deep shadow fingerprint we evolved into. But it’s something that has informed me over the years. Just visited on my mobile and didn’t get the same effect. It was different back in the day.
300IQGAMER 7y ago
I assume most people won’t sign up with their work or personal email or otherwise put revealing info on a porn site, so is this really an issue?
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  Assume again. It’s probably safe to assume (I know, right?) people are more cautious with websites used to arrange cheating for married individuals than with the typical porn site, and yet as the Ashley Madison disaster revealed, people are just plain stupid when it comes to online privacy.
300IQGAMER 7y ago
I doubt people use personal email or put other revealing info on those sites anyway. Would this be an issue if you didn’t?
- svachalek 7y ago
  If you've ever put that kind of information anywhere on the internet using the same browser, it's best to assume they can connect you. From browser fingerprinting to IP logging to security exploits, they'll find a way. You can definitely make it more difficult for them but without going all the way to TOR or something like it, it's best not to assume you have any secrets.
rv-de 7y ago
Maybe a good moment to commemorate the infamous RedTubeGate from 2013 in Germany: A couple lawyers and fishy business men launch an ad campaign on RedTube. Through that advertisement they collected IP addresses of visitors. Before launching that campaign they allegedly bought the rights for three cheap porn flicks. Now they also claim that they have some miraculous software which allows them to track who has been watching those flicks on RedTube. They even get a totally unclear blueprint for that software officially certified by a surveyor. [4] Then they appeal to a court in Cologne for the real world addresses corresponding to the IP addresses arguing they can prove those poor schmocks watched their illegally uploaded crap flicks. Suddenly thousands of people receive letters threatening legal action if they do not agree on paying a fee of 250 Euro. Many people comply out of fear for their reputation and just pay. 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20140822000304/http://www.wbs-law.de/eng/streaming/redtube-wave-streaming-warning-letters-hits-germany-49182/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140822000304/http://www.wbs-la... 2: https://www.joyofdata.de/blog/tool-visualization-connections-agents-entities-for-redtubegate/ https://www.joyofdata.de/blog/tool-visualization-connections... 3: https://web.archive.org/web/20140911214044/http://www.crackajack.de/2013/12/13/pornostreamingabmahnungsupdate-3-the-distributed-digital-porn-heist/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140911214044/http://www.cracka... 4: https://www.abmahnhelfer.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/EV.pdf https://www.abmahnhelfer.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/EV.pd... (many of the original sources have been deleted and are only available through archive.org)
- technothrasher 7y ago
  Prenda Law had a similar scam going here in the US, but used BitTorrent instead of RedTube. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law
  - bujak3000 7y ago
    The difference is that bittorrent is uploading content. People are getting sued left and right for Bittorrent cases in germany but for streaming, that was a new one.
- mirimir 7y ago
Tharkun 7y ago
This stuff seems to attract a lot more attention when it's about porn. Who knows, maybe people in general will care more about their privacy once they realize just who knows all about their kinks. Privacy is important. What you masturbate to really shouldn't be all that important. But if that's what it takes to wake people up, I'm glad the porn industry is leaking all this data.

348 points by interweb 7y ago

What does porn have to do with sex though?

> This paper explores tracking and privacy risks on pornography websites. Our analysis of 22,484 pornography websites indicated that 93% leak user data to a third party. Tracking on these sites is highly concentrated by a handful of major companies, which we identify. We successfully extracted privacy policies for 3,856 sites, 17% of the total. The policies were written such that one might need a two-year college education to understand them. Our content analysis of the sample's domains indicated 44.97% of them expose or suggest a specific gender/sexual identity or interest likely to be linked to the user. We identify three core implications of the quantitative results: 1) the unique/elevated risks of porn data leakage versus other types of data, 2) the particular risks/impact for vulnerable populations, and 3) the complications of providing consent for porn site users and the need for affirmative consent in these online sexual interactions.

thanatropism 7y ago

Possibly relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profumo_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profumo_affair

_-___________-_ 7y ago
how is that in any way related to the article?

bitxbitxbitcoin 7y ago

Looks like everyone - vulnerable population or not - should be using VPN when viewing pornographic content.[1] [1] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/07/why-you-need-to-use-a-vpn-to-stop-google-and-facebook-from-tracking-your-porn-habits/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/07/why-you-n...

andrepd 7y ago
s/pornographic content/any content/g
craftyguy 7y ago
While I don't disagree with using a VPN as you suggest, I would be wary of using an advertisement by a VPN company as a supporting source for that claim.
- liability 7y ago
  I think if you use a VPN that doesn't have any of your personal information of file for billing or infrastructure purposes (like your residential ISP does) then at the very least the shady logging VPN will have a dossier on you that doesn't include your name, street address, bank or credit card numbers, etc. Even if the VPN is otherwise a bunch of Mafia scum datamining you as hard as they can, you're still better off than if you were raw-dogging on Comcast. However I think those VPN companies that throw around suspicious abouts of cash advertising all ask for credit cards or similar. I would never do business with one of them, it's pointless. I also hate NordVPN's YouTube advertising campaign in particular, in which they pay YouTube creators to mislead their audience. Suggesting among other things that connections to your bank's website are unencrypted if you aren't using a VPN.
CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
VPNs don't help here. https://panopticlick.eff.org https://panopticlick.eff.org https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29
- fragsworth 7y ago
  According to panopticlick, Chrome is 100% secure in incognito mode.
  - some_furry 7y ago
    That's really cool! Who knew Chrome was doing so well? The second article CiPHPerCoder linked seems to be more focused on the VPN marketing aspect. A more interactive approach might be https://faq.dhol.es/@Soatok/cryptography/which-vpn-service-will-protect-me-from-hackers https://faq.dhol.es/@Soatok/cryptography/which-vpn-service-w...

bfirsh 7y ago

Here's an HTML version if you're on a phone: https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1907.06520/ https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1907.06520/

meruru 7y ago

The hentai sites I tend to use are pretty good in this regard I think. Most of them even work with no JS. E.g. https://danbooru.donmai.us https://danbooru.donmai.us https://e-hentai.org https://e-hentai.org Edit: I tried visiting them without adblock and I'm actually surprised they didn't even have ads.

scanny 7y ago
God forbid someone mis-clicks while browsing this thread at work
posix_compliant 7y ago
In case it wasn't already abundantly clear, all of these links are not safe for work.
- meruru 7y ago
  Ah, yes. Hentai means cartoon pornography.
hnaccy 7y ago
e-hentai is EOL if you weren't aware.
- meruru 7y ago
  I know, but I'll stick to it until a proper successor appears. nhentai.net and hitomi.la recompresses images and I want to be able to archive the originals easily.
the8472 7y ago
Note that both sites also host non-pornographic content and on danbooru it's the dominant kind.
mirimir 7y ago
Those are good sites. But cartoon porn with underage characters is illegal in some countries. And marginally so in the US, depending on attitude of the prosecutor. Also, I've come across some cartoon porn sites that are too disturbing to even risk describing here. Violence per se isn't so illegal, but underage sex + violence may well be.

wruza 7y ago

At least it serves its main goal. Youtube is far behind with their stupid suggestions than any major porn aggregator.

scanny 7y ago
To be fair, Youtubes content is significantly more diverse and harder to classify than what these aggregators deal with.

kingkawn 7y ago

I've assumed (without evidence, only deduction) since the 90s that every pornographic thing anyone has ever looked at has been recorded for future blackmail use against social rebellions.

shostack 7y ago
I wouldn't be shocked if we have a mass kompromat attack trying to coerce people into doing something based on some porn site analytics data. Paired with god knows what Cambridge Analytica had at their disposal, it probably wouldn't be too difficult.
Raphmedia 7y ago
It might be my age demographic but everyone I know is very open with their choices of pornography and I have the link to several of my friend's favorite lists and playlists. There are also shared accounts of paid websites going around and we can see the "recently watched" lists. There shouldn't be any shame to pornography unless you are consuming illegal content. Unless you are a content creator and wish to keep your personal and online life separated, there's not much of a blacklist potential.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  I agree, but millennials have no power, there's the potential that what they've done (while being tracked and recorded every moment of their lives) could be used to blacklist the entire generation by zombie boomers and their xer children. They've already come of age during a ruined economy, this could just be another strike. Xers will live long enough that they could skip most of the millennials in favor of their kids, who may take their parents' experiences as a cautionary tale and be more careful and contrived about their public faces (I think there's ample evidence of this wariness.)
  - Raphmedia 7y ago
    > but millennials have no power Millennials are up to 38 years old in 2019.

johnedwards 7y ago

Some friends noted that this had been up on HN for three hours with no comments. So I decided to read the paper and note some highlights. > What Jack does not know is that incognito mode only ensures his browsing history is not stored on his computer. e sites he visits, as well as any third-party trackers, may observe and record his online actions. > ‘30% of all the data transferred across the internet is porn,’ with site YouPorn using six times more bandwidth than Hulu (Kleinman, 2017) > Herein, we take such a ‘sex positive’ view of porn and access to online pornography. While acknowledging the many racist, misogynistic, heteronormative and other problematic histories and themes in pornography and its production, distribution and consumption, our work recognizes the ubiquity and permanence of porn and its many uses and social functions, and the danger of societal, state, and institutional narratives that might work to discipline gender and sex. > To identify third-parties found on a given website we used the webXray software platform. webXray 'is a tool for analyzing thirdparty content on web pages and identifying the companies which collect user data’ (webXray, 2018) > We used four coders from diverse backgrounds: one primary researcher and three volunteers. Three coders were women (one identifed her sexuality as fluid; the others as queer), and one was a heterosexual man. > Coders were instructed to code Presence for: ‘Any word or phrase that indicates or suggests the porn content will feature a specifc gender or sexual identity, orientation, or preference,’ and/or ‘Any word or phrase that indicates or suggests the porn content will feature a specifc sexual focus, body part or type, identity or character (like race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, profession), act, fetish, interest, porn genre, porn trope, etc. >Our March 2018 analysis successfully examined 22,484 sites drawn from the Alexa list of one million most popular websites where the URL, page title, or page description includes ‘porn.’ We found third-party tracking is widespread, privacy policies are difficult to understand and do not disclose such tracking, and third-parties may often be able to infer specifc sexual interests based solely on a site URL. > We identified 230 different companies and services tracking users in our sample. Such tracking is highly concentrated by a handful of major companies, some of which are pornography-specifc. Of non-pornography-specifc services, Google tracks 74% of sites, Oracle 24%, Facebook 10%, Cloudflare and Yadro 7%, and New Relic and Lotame 6%. Porn-specific trackers in the top ten are exoClick (40%), JuicyAds (11%), and EroAdvertising (9%). > Based on a random sample, 44.97%of porn site URLs expose or strongly suggest the site content includes or targets one or more specific gender or sexual: identities or orientations, and/or topic(s) of interest/focus. > We contend that the tracking of online porn consumption represents an even riskier violation of privacy, in line with Citron’s (2019:1870,1881) argument that: "Sexual privacy sits at the apex of privacy values because of its importance to sexual agency, intimacy, and equality. We are free only insofar as we can manage the boundaries around our bodies and intimate activities… It therefore deserves recognition and protection, in the same way that health privacy, financial privacy, communications privacy, children’s privacy, educational privacy, and intellectual privacy do." > For example, same-sex relations between consenting adults are criminalized in 70 United Nations member states, with punishments ranging from imprisonment to death (Fox et al., 2019). Thee consequences of sexual privacy violations in such contexts would clearly be severe. Even in societies with less regulation around sex, breaches of sexual privacy often have bodily stakes > Porn website privacy policies are long, dense, difficult to understand, and only 11% of the third-parties observed tracking users on a given page are listed in the policy, leaving users ignorant of which organizations may be assembling catalogues of their perceived sexual interests Edit: I have been adding to this comment as I read the study. I do have other things to do today.

pessimizer 7y ago

Mindgeek runs all of the biggest porn sites, and also runs its own ad network. Since the biggest of those sites are their "tube" sites, they run into the same issues as youtube when it comes to tracking individual tastes. Since the product is porn, which is very easily classifiable with a list of the physical features of actors (with maybe a few behavioral distinctions), the actors in the video, how they are matched ("how" doing a lot of heavy lifting here) and possibly director, producer, and age of content, it would be easy for them to have a very specific dossier on all users. Moreover, it would be financially beneficial, because it'd be easy to maximize engagement with that stuff and a past record of engagement time, and that information would also aid conversions to their other paysite products (of which there are many.) The fact that they run so many paysites probably means they can associate specific sexual tastes (and schedules) with a credit card number. Mindgeek have also shown themselves to be extremely savvy technologists, so this stuff is probably already being done. If it's your own ad network, is it really a third party, though? The plethora of domains does give the user the impression that they're leaving one business and moving to another, when it's really more akin to switching rooms. example of unexpected situation: I used a credit card to join vanillanormalromance.com, but I watch weird stuff on redtube. ----- edit: for some reason it didn't occur to me, but there would clearly be an interest to sell these categories to other porn sites, facebook-style, generating even more info from people not on Mindgeek sites. I feel like I remember a few Mindgeek/Manwin devs being good HN posters.

jedberg 7y ago
I’ve met their head of data science. They’re doing all that stuff and have been for many years. Porn has always been leaders in technology. They were the first to embrace home video and can arguably be credited for VHS winning over BetaMax despite being inferior, because it was cheaper and all the porn was VHS only.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- edgarvaldes 7y ago
  >can arguably be credited for VHS winning over BetaMax This is something that is always mentioned, but sometimes I wonder if it is not a myth, or a simple exaggeration or simplification.

jstewartmobile 7y ago

Between Stormy Daniels, "grab 'em by the p", and Epstein's community service for pedophilia, perhaps we are living in a post-blackmail era? NXVIM, pizzagate, Weinstein, Epstein, the Catholic Church--all I see now are echoes of Elizabeth Bathory and feudalism.

tdy721 7y ago

I always liked how thepiratebay.org seemed to make that tracking really transparent. Visit that site on a machine and observe the advertising. It’s not the deep shadow fingerprint we evolved into. But it’s something that has informed me over the years. Just visited on my mobile and didn’t get the same effect. It was different back in the day.

300IQGAMER 7y ago

I assume most people won’t sign up with their work or personal email or otherwise put revealing info on a porn site, so is this really an issue?

ComputerGuru 7y ago
Assume again. It’s probably safe to assume (I know, right?) people are more cautious with websites used to arrange cheating for married individuals than with the typical porn site, and yet as the Ashley Madison disaster revealed, people are just plain stupid when it comes to online privacy.

300IQGAMER 7y ago

I doubt people use personal email or put other revealing info on those sites anyway. Would this be an issue if you didn’t?

svachalek 7y ago
If you've ever put that kind of information anywhere on the internet using the same browser, it's best to assume they can connect you. From browser fingerprinting to IP logging to security exploits, they'll find a way. You can definitely make it more difficult for them but without going all the way to TOR or something like it, it's best not to assume you have any secrets.

rv-de 7y ago

Maybe a good moment to commemorate the infamous RedTubeGate from 2013 in Germany: A couple lawyers and fishy business men launch an ad campaign on RedTube. Through that advertisement they collected IP addresses of visitors. Before launching that campaign they allegedly bought the rights for three cheap porn flicks. Now they also claim that they have some miraculous software which allows them to track who has been watching those flicks on RedTube. They even get a totally unclear blueprint for that software officially certified by a surveyor. [4] Then they appeal to a court in Cologne for the real world addresses corresponding to the IP addresses arguing they can prove those poor schmocks watched their illegally uploaded crap flicks. Suddenly thousands of people receive letters threatening legal action if they do not agree on paying a fee of 250 Euro. Many people comply out of fear for their reputation and just pay. 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20140822000304/http://www.wbs-law.de/eng/streaming/redtube-wave-streaming-warning-letters-hits-germany-49182/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140822000304/http://www.wbs-la... 2: https://www.joyofdata.de/blog/tool-visualization-connections-agents-entities-for-redtubegate/ https://www.joyofdata.de/blog/tool-visualization-connections... 3: https://web.archive.org/web/20140911214044/http://www.crackajack.de/2013/12/13/pornostreamingabmahnungsupdate-3-the-distributed-digital-porn-heist/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140911214044/http://www.cracka... 4: https://www.abmahnhelfer.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/EV.pdf https://www.abmahnhelfer.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/EV.pd... (many of the original sources have been deleted and are only available through archive.org)

technothrasher 7y ago
Prenda Law had a similar scam going here in the US, but used BitTorrent instead of RedTube. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law
- bujak3000 7y ago
  The difference is that bittorrent is uploading content. People are getting sued left and right for Bittorrent cases in germany but for streaming, that was a new one.
mirimir 7y ago

Tharkun 7y ago

This stuff seems to attract a lot more attention when it's about porn. Who knows, maybe people in general will care more about their privacy once they realize just who knows all about their kinks. Privacy is important. What you masturbate to really shouldn't be all that important. But if that's what it takes to wake people up, I'm glad the porn industry is leaking all this data.