Dark Web Welcomes Pornhub As The Site Launches A Tor Mirror Website

23/01/2020

People use Tor to browse anonymously. The popular adult entertainment site Pornhub knows this, and wants to reach those people.

To do this, the site launched a mirror site on the Tor network, so people browsing the dark web can watch its videos privately without having to worry about being tracked online.

The adult entertainment company purposefully disabled its login and user upload functions for the Tor site, but visitors can still view content anonymously.

In a blog post announcing the site's launch, Pornhub said that the move was to help protect the content viewing preferences of the LGBT community:

"The move serves to bolster user privacy, ensure network security, and alleviate concerns about browsing habits among LGBT users whose preferences remain criminalized in certain countries."
Pornhub onion

According to Corey Price, the Vice President for Pornhub:

""Here at Pornhub, we are privacy-conscious and dedicated to ensuring the confidentiality of our users. As ill-willed hackers and compromising surveillance practices become growing concerns, it’s important that we set up internal safeguards to help anonymize the online activity and communication of our users and keep their personal information and digital footprint free from prying eyes."

Price mentioned that big companies like Facebook, The New York Times and the BBC have all set up their own mirror sites for users of the dark web.

Running over the Tor network, the sites encrypt user data and make individual connections private and less traceable. Pornhub here wants to "follow in their footsteps" to help ensure users' browsing experience is "anonymous, private and secure.”

Tor is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication, by directing internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network consisting of more than seven thousand relays. Encryption applied at each node along the route to conceal users' real location and usage from anyone else.

Tor's intended use is to protect the personal privacy of its users, as well as their freedom and ability to conduct confidential communication by keeping their internet activities unmonitored.

The name Tor is derived from an acronym for the original software project name "The Onion Router".

And the launch of Pornhub’s on Tor browser follows a long list of efforts by the company to continue to ensure the confidentiality and privacy of their users, to protect them from hackers and safeguard them from surveillance.

For example back in 2017, the site started switching to HTTPS to safeguard its users. Then in 2018, the company launched a free Virtual Private Network (VPN) so people can browse Pornhub (and the web) with better privacy and less restriction. Also in 2018, Pornhub started accepting the Verge cryptocurrency, allowing users to make anonymous transactions by obfuscating the IP address and geolocation.

Also in 2020, Pornhub announced that its website starts supporting the Tether cryptocurrency.