How Porn Sites Track Users
Adult and Porn sites track you, the same way other ecommerce websites track their users. Porn websites are a business, one of the largest bandwidth industries online. In 2016 PornHub reported that nearly 3,110 Petabytes of porn was viewed by their users! Although paid pornography is declined in the past five years due to the abundance of user generated and otherwise free porn.
If you are trying to keep your porn surfing habits secret, then at least start with a web browser in incognito mode. Google’s Chrome offers such and options, as well as Firefox. However, that is not enough. A VPN is needed as well as a knowledge of how porn track you online and what you can do to block tracking.
Porn Site User Profiles – Porn sites like Brazzers.com require that users create an account in order to purchase multi-day subscriptions or ahem, packages! Just like any other online retailer, porn web sites require a username and email address at minimum to track you and your purchases. If you pay with a credit card, then they will need a zip code and possible your complete address.
Cookie Tracking – Cookie tracking is one of the oldest and most basic form of user tracking. This is how websites track your behavior as you arrive on a website, record what pages you visit, and if you purchased anything online. If you are watching porn online, then your browser likely has a number of cookies from adult websites!
Have you ever looked at a product online, say a new car, and then wondered why new car ads started popping up on every website you surf for the next few days? That’s because the website you were on set a cookie or two on your laptop or mobile device.
Cookies are a small text files saved on the readers computer or device. They serve as a means to track user behavior. The visited website updates the cookie every time you return to read a page or two. Many cookies are useful. They save things like user logins and passwords. Other can be used to rack your every move online and expose your porn surfing habits if you know where to look!
Advertiser Tracking – Advertising tracking works the same way as cookie tracking does. Except in the case of an advertiser the cookie is referred to as a “third-party cookie.” That’s because the first party is you, the reader. The second party is the website you are visiting. That leaves the third party being the advertisers. Most up-to-date web browsers give you the option to block third-party cookies and thereby limit tracking and online behaviors
Malware and Malvertising – Malware is commonly distributed (unbeknownst to the host porn site) through advertising networks. One wrong tap and a porn fan could accidentally download a virus, or malware like Fireball, BadRabbit, or NotPeta.
Hackers – If you are familiar with the infamous AshleyMadison.com story, then you know that hackers exposed to supposedly private accounts of millions of users. AshleyMadison is an adult website aimed at encouraging extra-marital affairs. The identities including email addresses of users of the adult site were dumped to an online website where anyone could look up a user account. In addition, it was revealed the majority female users were bots or fake accounts. If that were not enough, it was revealed that users who paid extra to have their profiles deleted, were still associated with accounts
Porn Viewing Apps – Adult sites like SexTube have an apps you can download for the Google Play or iTunes stores. They are legit apps to watch porn online, but they lead to further user tracking.
Michelle writes about cyber security, data privacy focusing on social media privacy as well as how to protect your IoT devices. She She has worked in internet technology for over 20 years and owns METRONY, LLC. Michelle earned a B.S. in Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Michelle published a guide to Cyber Security for Business Travelers