CYBERSPACE—After a series of online data collection scandals, with Facebook just six weeks ago ordered to pay a $5 billion fine over a massive misuse of user data, as AVN.com reported, a new report by the investigative Vice News site reveals that heavily trafficked porn sites are also in the data collection business.
But with porn sites, the issue of gathering data from users could be even more sensitive than on social media sites, for the obvious reason that porn site users constantly reveal their most intimate sexual tastes and fantasies.
The busiest porn sites can also collect from a user base that in many cases exceeds that of the top social media platforms. According to the web traffic data site SimilarWeb, PornHub is the sixth most trafficked site in the United States, ranking three spots below Facebook, but two spots ahead of eighth-place Twitter, and four in front of 10th-place Instagram.
Though Vice reporter Sebastian Meineck notes that MindGeek, the conglomerate that owns PornHub, claims to “respect your privacy," in fact, Meineck says, “What I discovered is that porn sites are selling the makeup of our sexual desires and automatically collecting data that could potentially be used to track individual users over time.”
Meineck joined the advertising platforms used by both MindGeek—TrafficJunky—and Hammy Media, parent company of xHamster. That ad platform is called TrafficStars. The reporter found that the platforms offer advertisers highly targeted ads, so specific that they could not exist without the collection of extensive user data.
“You can narrow it down to audiences who browse content related to specific categories like ‘Milf,’ ‘BDSM’ or ‘anal,’” the Vice reporter wrote. “I could also choose whether the target group was gay, straight, trans or ‘female-friendly,’ and pick a place of residence: country, region and city.”
In addition, an advertiser can choose to target users only specific times of day, and using specific web browsers, operating systems or languages.
“It seems hard to believe that Pornhub can both respect your privacy and offer advertising tailored to individual specifications,” Meineck wrote.
The categories offered by the ad platforms can be far more specific even than just, for example, “milf.” Meineck found one list of targeting keywords that included, “big tits milf,” “my friend’s older mom,” and “thick milf,” indicating that the porn sites are collecting extremely specific data on users’ sexual preferences and habits.
While the sites say that they do not track users' behavior outside of their own sites, and also that they separate the identity of individual users from their data sets, Meineck notes that even under those conditions users can still be tracked bases on their “digital fingerprints.”
The “fingerprint” is a complex set of data that is likely unique to each user—everything from the specific combination of fonts and plugins installed in a browser, to software programs, printer drivers and other fine details, as Ad Combo explains that combine into a profile that allows sites to track users even without “cookies” and other traditional user-tracking technology.
Photo By Colin / Wikimedia Commons
