"tell them you read it at El Reg"
Well, at least we know how El Reg journos spend long weekends...
Faced with growing state enthusiasm to block its services, one of the world's most popular adult sites has created its own virtual private network (VPN). PornHub's VPNhub (this link is safe to follow) is just what it says on the box: a VPN app designed to protect user traffic, hide the Web server they're visiting, and spoof …
"Won't track you? Aren't Pornhub the people who are always releasing stats like what's popular at Christmas, halloween etc.?"
I could sit outside a shop, counting the number of people going in.
That will tell me how many people visited the shop, not where they live, where they had visited before and afterwards and what they bought from Ikea three weeks ago.
That does not mean they're tracking you, they're just counting the pages you open - count that goes to a total that they can then play with. Once totalled, the data is effectively anonimyzed.
It's ironic that the only industry that doesn't play fast and loose with our private data is the porn industry - in other words, it's the porn guys that are the cleanest of the lot.
So to stop people knowing you are using Pornhub you connect to a VPN on Pornhubs servers?
I might go and get one of them mucky mags and ask the shopkeeper to put it in a bag. Though yes I can see the appeal for users of such sites to hide what they do once connected but doesn't https take care of that?
I may be missing something here?
"So to stop people knowing you are using Pornhub you connect to a VPN on Pornhubs servers?"
Pornhub always knows you are using Pornhub's servers. Nowadays, the pornographer is one of the people I would trust most with this information, which is a bit of a damning indictment of today's society.
Yes agreed but what I mean is that your ISP will see you connect to a VPN on Prohub servers knowing you are going to Pornhub. If you use another VPN they don't.
There's also the danger here that if this is used to get round the stupid age verification then it may be time for them to implement "think of the children!" legislation against personal VPN. Not something we want to see at all.
Yes agreed but what I mean is that your ISP will see you connect to a VPN on Prohub servers knowing you are going to Pornhub. If you use another VPN they don't.
They won't know for certain what you're using VPNhub to access.
From the FAQ:
Will my ISP/mobile provider know what I do with VPNhub?
All our data is encrypted, that mean that your ISP or anybody won’t be able to know what you are doing while using VPNhub.
The alternative is to specifically request access to adult content via your ISP, which leaves little doubt about your intentions, should the "perv" list ever become public.
I suspect that if any major ISP's list was ever made public, it would be so long you wouldn't have to worry about any "moral" person (church leader, head of PTA, etc.) seeing you on it. They'd be busy worrying about you seeing them on it!
If any ISP was collecting such a list, and then accidentally made it public, it would probably also be the straw that breaks the camel's back for getting proper privacy/tracking legislation in the US...
The alternative is to specifically request access to adult content via your ISP, which leaves little doubt about your intentions, should the "perv" list ever become public.
If usage data published concerning porn sites is anything to go by, then the list of people who don't partake is much smaller than those who do.
Not saying what's in the pocket... just saying.
I have a large collection of patio chair pictures in various compromising poses. In fact I think I have the full set.
I was looking for a Kama Sutra (Seatra?) pun to make for that, then I found these: https://en.egoparis.com/collection/kama-2/
(SFW, in case you're wondering)
Oh the b100dy irony ... that pornographers are doing more to resist invasions of privacy, and securing their viewers' rights as adults to read/view/hear what the heck they like, than the noble, pompous, self-righteous titans of the internet like Facebook and Google, who daily lie through their teeth to keep the addicts clicking away?
If you got a better service and more reliable product from your drug dealer than when buying alcohol legally in the supermarket, the parallels would be 100% complete.
We live in an increasingly crazy, sick world, and since neither politicians nor the corporations who own them have any incentive to rescue the internet-using punters, it's high time for adults to wake up and take some responsibility for themselves. Just as an alcoholic sooner or later reaches that point where they "stand at the edge of the abyss" and must decide, deeply and personally, to step back (or not), so it is for social media addicts: no one else will help you.
Yes, because that's the only privacy many people care about... how many politicians - and not only politcians, hard supporters of the "moral values", the "true family", etc. etc. are caught looking at the worst porn?
Still, it's just money - those people know in their business privacy is money, unlike FB, Google & C. where the lack of privacy is money. So really, nothing different - both businesses are still built on fully exploiting people and selling them.
> If you got a better service and more reliable product from your drug dealer than when buying alcohol legally in the supermarket, the parallels would be 100% complete.
My drug dealer always provides better service than the supermarket. I call him and he comes round within an hour, don't get that from Tesco, et al.
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Save yourself embarrassment!
"Please tell the court what site were you browsing for this adult material on."
"PORNHUB, your honour!"
"And where did you first hear about this ... porn hub?"
"thereg"
"Pardon?"
Or alternatively :
Save yourself embarrassment!
"Please tell the court what site were you browsing for this adult material on."
"PORNHUB, your honour!"
"Oh, i've never heard of that, is it better than Xhamster then.?"
"No logging"
Yeah... and how about that cloud provider you're hosting on ?
What's that old saying in IT Security ? "Phsyical access = game over".
Not your server, not your hypervisor, not your network, not your control.
You might not log, but you can bet your bottom dollar that at the very least they'll be doing NetFlow, if not deeper level monitoring. They'll know exactly where your traffic is coming from and where it's going to.
Oh, I agree that if you want super-secure privacy then it's not the way to go. If I were masterminding a hacker/terrorist conspiracy then I'd want something a bit more secure. But for pretending you're in the US in order to view stuff, it's fine. And it's not the principle reason for having it anyway.
The company that the government are going to be paying (presumably) or directing payment to, in order to run the age checking system, to ensure that only over age people view porn, is just about to launch a product that lets people appear like they're in a different country, in order to view porn elsewhere, without needing the check.
Who'se government is in charge of this shit show again?
The free version is supposedly sponsored by ads but i installed it to test if it would allow me to access geo-locked US websites and not been shown any ads yet. It did work with some sites that are blocked from outside the US but some still came up saying 'this content is not available outside the US' which suggests they use other techniques to identify your location other than your IP.
It seems reasonably quick as well, no noticeable speed difference in general surfing over my standard ADSL2 connection. I did try to see if you could get around having to buy premium for the desktop version by trying to create a wireless hotspot on my phone while the VPN app was connected and then connecting to that from my PC, but that didn't work as although the phones browser went through the VPN the desktop session via the hotspot bypassed it and connected directly. Maybe spoofing the browser or using a proxy server app on the phone could allow you to do it but haven't tried that.
It is a cheap money grab for the premium version, it is almost impossible not to sign up for the premium by mistake when you install the free version.
Desktop versions for Mac & Pc are not available for free trial.
It didn't connect anywhere in the country I tried it..
PoS and NOT FREE at all
in some countries it's illegal to use a VPN service with severe criminal penalties. It can also be illegal to use VOIP services, including Skype.
Be sure to check before visiting countries in the middle east, but really, check for any country you intend to visit for any specific laws on internet use, whether you'd consider the use normal (vpn to work, cloud services, instant messaging and VOIP) as well as ahem personal (pr0n, movies, chat, social media).
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