Some of the world’s biggest porn sites are about to go dark in the UK.
The government is going to introduce new a law that will require sites, like PornHub, to introduce effective age verification blocks, making sure people under the age of 18 cannot access them.
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Killock said the porn industry is not cash-rich enough to safely store millions of IDs. “Google is very secure, pornographic websites are not,” he said.He also fears that leaked information could be used to blackmail people, pointing to current “sextortion” scam emails which claim — largely falsely — that they have evidence someone’s porn habits and demand bitcoin in return.
On a more quotidian level, Killock is also discomfited by a private company like MindGeek possessing personal user data, as it would be in its commercial interest to monetize it. “There’s literally no way you can trust a private company on privacy,” he said.
