Age Verification is Not a Threat to Privacy. But the Pornography Industry Is.  

By:

 *Composite story based on common experiences 


Will* sat at the computer, his head in his hands.  

He’d been hacked. He’d fallen for a clever scam on a pornography site, and he’d been hacked. 

What could he do? He couldn’t report the crime … To do so, he’d have to admit he’d been watching pornography. And who knows what an investigation could reveal about him…  

Worse still, he didn’t know what information the hackers had. Did they know what kind of videos he watched? Did they have access to his conversations with other users? What would they do with that data? Would they sell it? Would they blackmail him with it?  

Will rubbed his hands over his face. He mopped at the sweat gathering on his brow. He’d never felt so helpless in his life.  


Will represents one of millions of individuals whose personal data has been hacked and/or leaked in the process of watching pornography online.  

A lot of people are concerned about protecting the privacy of online pornography users. Many of those people have focused their attention on efforts to protect children from pornography—but not in the way one would hope. Specifically, they claim that requiring pornography websites to verify that users are over 18 before granting them access would be a serious privacy violation.  

But age verification is not a threat to privacy. Rather, the real threat to privacy is the pornography industry itself.  

We’ll tell you why.  

How Current Age Verification Technology Protects User Privacy

The conversation about age verification has come to the fore of public discourse as the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments last week in the case Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. The ruling will decide if Texas’s age verification law should be struck down over concerns of constitutionality.  

The Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) provided an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief to the Supreme Court in support of the Texas law. The law in question requires that the age of those seeking to access a pornography platform be verified before they gain access.  

The AVPA’s brief debunked privacy concerns expressed by the Free Speech Coalition (the pornography industry’s lobby group) and other opponents of the Texas law. For instance, they explain:  

AVPA members provide age-verification systems that present an even lower risk of ‘reveal[ing] intimate desires and preferences’ than verifying age in person at a brick-and-mortar store. Many of those age-verification systems do not require government identification, allowing even Texans without identification to verify their age with ease. 

One of the most advanced age verification systems, known as BorderAge, can verify a person’s age simply by having them make three basic hand movements in front of the camera. Further, it “constrains the image to 96 pixels per inch, preventing any capture of fingerprints.” If the camera detects any facial features, the system halts and instructs the user to move their face out of the frame. 

VoiceAssure, which can also verify age without the disclosure of a government ID, uses “advanced algorithms and multiple vocal checks” to ensure that a user is over 18. The system also implements “anti-spoofing technology to ensure that the voice is genuine.” 

Age verification systems don’t amplify the amount of data a person gives to a pornography site because they are done through third-party applications.  

“The only thing we tell the adult website is that you’re over 18. We don’t pass on your image of yourself or any image of your driver’s license or any other ID you might have used. It’s entirely privacy preserving,” said Iain Corby, executive director of the AVPA. 

In fact, contrary to fear mongering by the pornography industry and others, companies that provide age verification services do not maintain databases of people’s personal data, be it pictures or other details. Thus, there are no databases of personally identifying information to be hacked!  

You can listen to Iain Corby explain various age verification technologies and common fallacies about age verification below.

The Truth about the Pornography Industry and User Privacy

If a person is truly concerned about their data being accessed, leaked, or sold online, the best remedy is to stay off pornography sites all together. The pornography industry does not have a glowing history with protecting user data. 

A few years ago, the pornography site Luscious was in hot water for a data breach that exposed 1.2 million user profiles that were supposedly anonymous.  

The pornography website, Brazzers, exposed nearly 800,000 user profiles in a data breach back in 2013. Brazzers is owned by Aylo (formerly MindGeek).  

CAM4, a livestreaming pornography website, was found to be leaking 11 billion records including millions of emails, password hashes, first and last names, country of origin, sexual orientation, usernames, chat and email transcripts from the site, IP addresses, and inter-user conversations.  

Additionally, a 2020 study which examined data from 22,474 pornography site homepages found that 93% of the pages leaked user data to third parties, that pages which leaked data did so to an average of seven domains, and that 79% of the pages had a third-party cookie. Third party trackers included companies like Google, Oracle, and Facebook, as well as pornography trackers including ExoClick, JuicyAds, and EroAdvertising.  

Yes, it’s fair to say that any Internet platform is vulnerable to a data breach. However, pornography platforms are particularly at risk because of the taboo nature of the content they are producing. 

Put simply: If a hacker steals someone’s data from a pornography site, in order to report that crime, the user would have to admit they were hacked while watching pornography. 

Pornography Sites Already Know Everything About You

Rather than spending their energy fighting age verification, what advocates for data privacy should really be doing is looking more closely at the ways the pornography industry already violates their user privacy. 

In fact, pornography sites collect more data about users than Netflix or Hulu, a Quartz article reported. 

“The average user can watch as much porn as they’d like without so much as making an account, let alone paying, but in exchange for meeting desires that can’t always be met elsewhere, companies like MindGeek access user data because the user more willingly lets them. And it eventually pays off, when users decide to pay for premium content and the habits of paying subscribers become even clearer.” 

Behind every click by a child on a pornography site are corporate enterprises that use sophisticated technology capable of exploiting their naiveté and curiosity. Mainstream pornography distributors like Pornhub and XVideos can fine tune the content they advertise to users to increase future engagement. 

Utilizing algorithms and artificial intelligence, Pornhub, through its production partners, works to create new pornography designed to appeal to its users with a level of specificity that includes even the type of furniture and carpet in a pornography scene! 

When it comes down to it, the widely touted privacy concerns around age verification for pornography sites are nothing but a smokescreen for the pornography industry to hide behind. Because the reality is, they’ve turned manipulation of user data —that is details about pornography browsing history that most users likely think are private—into a business model. 

ACTION: Urge Your Legislators to Protect Children from Online Pornography!

Age verification is one of several policy strategies aimed at keeping children safe online. NCOSE supports all of these efforts, emphasizing that the best way to protect children online is by creating as many barriers as possible to block their exposure to Internet pornography. There is no single silver bullet for this problem, but with multiple lines of defense, we can make a difference. 

Please take 30 seconds to complete the quick action below, calling for legislation to protect children from online pornography!  

The Numbers

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NCOSE leads the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation with over 300 member organizations.

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The National Center on Sexual Exploitation has had over 100 policy victories since 2010. Each victory promotes human dignity above exploitation.

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NCOSE’s activism campaigns and victories have made headlines around the globe. Averaging 93 mentions per week by media outlets and shows such as Today, CNN, The New York Times, BBC News, USA Today, Fox News and more.

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