Tens of millions of Americans are unable to access Pornhub amid a fight over privacy laws.
Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, has blocked people in 16 states from visiting the adult site due to new age-verification laws.
The 16 states, all based in the South or Midwest, recently began requiring users provide state-approved identification, such as a passport or driver’s license, to prove they are over 18 to access content.
States first started introducing the legislation in 2023 due to growing political concerns over minors viewing inappropriate online material.
But Pornhub and other critics argue that the age verification requirement violates user privacy and puts their personal data at risk.
The states where Pornhub is blocked are: Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Indiana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Florida.
‘Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years,’ a company spokesperson said.
‘But we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults.
Tens of millions of Americans are unable to access Pornhub amid a fight over privacy laws
‘Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.
‘Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy.’
When users in any of the blocked states attempt to access Pornhub or similar sites, they instead see a message from adult performer Cherie Deville stating that access is blocked for their own safety.
But it appears that residents of blocked states are already seeking a loophole, namely through the use of VPNs.
Pornhub is now inaccessible in 16 US states where over 18 age verification laws have prompted the site’s parent company, Aylo, to completely block access to its sites
A VPN, or virtual private network, is an online service that encrypts your data and masks your IP address to create a more secure connection between your device and the internet.
VPNs allow users to mask their true locations and pretend to be somewhere they’re not by routing their web traffic through a server in that alternate location.
A VPN user in Florida can trick a website into thinking they are in New York, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. Thus, this is the most effective workaround for people in states where Pornhub is banned.
A report from VPNMentor’s cybersecurity and research lab found that VPN use in Florida increased up to 1,150 percent within hours of the state’s age verification law going into effect on January 1.
Similar, albeit smaller, spikes have occurred in other affected states, including a 967 percent increase in Utah and a 234 percent increase in Texas in 2023.
But there are some data and device security risks associated with using VPNs.
While these networks are generally safe, you can’t trust all of them. Data being sent through a third party server is always at risk of being compromised, and the VPN’s own software may contain malware or viruses, according to IT company Devoteam.
It’s possible that more states could see adult entertainment age restriction legislation go into effect after President-elect Donald Trump takes office later this month.
Project 2025, drawn-up by the far-right Heritage Foundation think tank, details plans to criminalize and ban pornography under the Trump administration.
The document argues that porn has no First Amendment right protections, even going so far as to say that porn producers and distributors should be imprisoned, and tech companies that circulate it should be shut down.
Whether the Trump administration will actually seek to achieve this, and succeed, remains to be seen.
An Aylo spokesperson told DailyMail.com: ‘The best solution to make the internet safer, preserve user privacy, and prevent children from accessing adult content is performing age verification at the source: on the device.
‘The technology to accomplish this exists today. What is required is the political and social will to make it happen.
‘We are eager to be part of this solution and are happy to collaborate with government, civil society and tech partners to arrive at an effective device-based age verification solution.’
