Our Porn Habits Will Go Public: Should We Care?
October 20, 2015
For months there has been a lot of speculation going around that the hot and very naughty porn videos we look at online could be revealed, and that anyone with access to the internet could simply put in our name and see the different videos that we have been watching and jerking off to. It’s a pretty scary thought, especially with the huge amount of adult content available. Do you really want people to know about the porn you watch?
It is a huge issue of privacy for many people, as they feel that things like incognito mode and private browsing should protect our porn habits from being discovered, but it seems that it doesn’t. In fact, when you enable incognito mode you are quite clearly told that “going incognito doesn’t hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit”, so should we really care that our porn habits are going to be exposed, and how can we protect ourselves in the future?
The internet is a dark and dangerous place
The problem with trying to keep yourself totally private on the internet is that you can’t. Technology has grown so much that trying to hide who you are and what you are doing online is pretty much impossible. Websites will log what you are doing, with some even wanting to know your location so that can see where you are visiting from, and for many this is incredibly off-putting.
Another problem is that we are far too trusting with our information. How many of us are signed up to social media sites, which have access not only to our emails and phone numbers, but also to the kind of content we post. They use these posts to customise the adverts that pop up, and they can see just who we are, as well as the friends we keep.
It’s pretty frightening stuff to think of just how trusting we are of the forms we fill out online, and the fact that, even in “private” browsing, what we are doing can still clearly be seen by our internet providers and the websites that we are visiting. In fact, all it really does is prevent forms from auto-filling with the things we type in “private” mode, and the websites don’t show up in our history.
Yet another leak
It is only a few months ago that the Ashley Madison hacking took place, and if you aren’t sure what that is about it might be that you are one of the lucky ones to not have the website thrown in your face by every news network out there.
Basically, the Ashley Madison website was created so that married people could have affairs. You simply registered and got talking to other married people seeking no-strings sex and that was it. Dead simple and, it seems, incredibly popular. They had a huge number of members signed up, and in July of this year it all came crashing down.
Someone managed to get hold of the details of the users, including their credit card details and other identifying information, and threatened to expose it if Ashley Madison wasn’t immediately shut down. Unsurprisingly, the website did not cave, and hundreds found themselves exposed as looking for an affair, even if they weren’t actually having one. Not exactly what you want from a website that promised (at the time) that it was 100% secure, is it?
What is different this time?
Of course, this time it is different. This time it isn’t just those looking for an affair on a married dating site at risk… it is pretty much every single person who has dared to look online for some fapping material when the lights are out and they are all alone.
Incognito mode has lulled us into a false sense of security, as we think we are safe, but instead people can still see what we are up to and, in the wrong hands, that could be dangerous. As software engineer Brett Thomas explained in a blog post: “if a malicious party obtained identifiable access logs for just one of the websites that know your name, and view logs for just one of the adult websites you’ve visited, it could infer with very high probability – beyond plausible deniability – a list of porn you’ve viewed.”
As with the Ashley Madison case, “somebody could post a website that allows you to search anybody by email or Facebook username and view their porn browsing history”, meaning the different porn videos we look at online might soon be exposed in an Ashley Madison style way.
Should we really care?
The threat might sound absolutely terrifying, and while many websites are telling us that it absolutely 100% will happen, some are remaining optimistic… so should we actually be worried at all?
Some believe that we don’t need to, as it is unlikely to happen. But if it does, what then? Are we going to be shamed by the things that we have been watching, or will we just wait to see if it comes up in conversation when someone searches our name? After all, they will have to actively look into the porn we watch first for us to be “exposed”.
Shelbi Deacon, a writer for Cosmopolitan, has said that she doesn’t clear her browser history at all and invites people to check it, explaining that “I’m a grown-ass adult, so I don’t bother erasing my porn views anymore.”
Is it about time we were all that open about the kind of porn we are into, or is it just not that simple? Should we be concerned that the porn videos we watch might soon be exposed?
Since then she has gained a fine reputation with her blogs on sex advice, sexual health and amusing news stories from around the globe. She is also a campaigner for the rights of sex workers from all over the world.
In her spare time, Lara keeps herself active by going running, and is something of a film buff. She also loves to go travelling.
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