Watching porn online is about to become even more private

Good news… for, eh, everyone else.

We’re not saying you do, dear reader, but the millions of people who do watch porn online around the world will be glad to know that it’s about to become a more secure experience. According to VentureBeat, on Thursday, Pornhub, one of the biggest online pornography websites in the world (one of the top 100 most visited websites in the world, according to Google), announced that they were switching to Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). Now that might mean very little to you and me, but it makes for a more secure online experience than your standard HTTP protocol that connects you to various websites on the internet. For one, it makes it far harder for hackers to breach the security of HTTPS-protected websites, which, in the case of Pornhub and other adult websites, would potentially grant them access to some pretty sensitive information. It’s also particularly relevant in the United States on the back of the recent decision in Congress to reverse an FCC (Federal Communications Commission) privacy rule that will allow internet service providers to buy consumers’ web browsing data. When making the announcement, Pornhub said that the move came about after it emerged on a recent Google Transparency Report for the 100 most visited websites in the world that it was one of a number of adult websites not using HTTPS. Of 11 adult websites on the Google list, only three had been using the HTTPS protocol. Pornhub is now using it and another one on the list, YouPorn, a sister website of Pornhub, will do so from April 4 onwards. In a statement announcing the switch to HTTPS, Corey Price, vice president of Pornhub said: “Here at Pornhub, with more than 70 million daily visitors, we wanted to continue our concerted effort to maximize the privacy of our users, ensuring that what they do on our platform remains strictly confidential. “With the switch to HTTPS we are able to protect their identity as well as safeguard them against exposure to malware by third parties.” Might make some folk rest a little easier at night.