UPDATE 1/3/24: Pornhub has added North Carolina and Montana to its block list as both states implemented age-verification laws on Jan. 1.
A similar ban was imposed in Arkansas in August, joining Mississippi, Virginia, and Utah.
As 404 Media notes, people in those states who try to access sites run by Aylo (formerly MindGeek)—which includes Pornhub, YouPorn, RedTube, Brazzers, and more—are now met with a video message from performer Cherie DeVille explaining the ban.
"While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk," she says.
In a statement provided to PCMag, Aylo argues that "the way many jurisdictions worldwide 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," Aylo adds. "Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws."
Aylo says that it backs on-device verification: "The technology to accomplish this exists today. What is required is the political and social will to make it happen," according to Aylo, which also points to the "free and easy-to-use parental control features" already on many devices.
In North Carolina, House Bill 8 is a larger education bill that also covers things like adding a computer science requirement for high school graduation. But it also imposes the age-verification check for adult sites. In signing the bill in late September, Gov. Roy Cooper said those age checks are "important...to help protect children from online pornography."
HB8 requires sites to use "a commercially available database that is regularly used by businesses or governmental entities for the purpose of age and identity verification or...another commercially reasonable method." Sites that fail to comply could face a civil action from the parents of kids who viewed pornography or anyone whose data is unlawfully retained.
In Montana, SB 544 requires sites to verify age by having people provide "a digitized identification card" or access a "commercial age verification system" that checks a government ID or uses some other sort of "commercially reasonable method" to verify someone's age.
In both states, sites are covered by the laws if at least 33.3% of its content is adult in nature.
UPDATE (7/5/2023): It's not just Utah. Pornhub has now blocked access to its website in Mississippi and Virginia after both states implemented age-verification legislation.
Although Pornhub says it supports measures to prevent children from accessing adult content, the lack of state enforcement hurts companies that comply with these laws, it says.
After Louisiana enacted similar legislation, for example, "Pornhub was one of the few sites to comply," it says. As a result, traffic from the state dropped by 80%.
"These people did not stop looking for porn," Pornhub says. "They just migrated to other corners of the internet that don't ask users to verify age, that don't follow the law, that don't take user safety seriously, and that often don't even moderate content."
As a result, Pornhub is now blocking visitors from Mississippi and Virginia, in addition to its existing block on visitors from Utah. The company says that it prefers states adopt a standard where age is verified on the device, citing the existence of parental controls on most platforms.
As was the case with Utah, we at PCMag investigated Pornhub's blockade using a VPN. Although we were unable to find a VPN service with servers in Mississippi, we were able to connect to a VPN server in Virginia. Upon navigating to Pornhub, we found a similar message to the one the company displays to visitors from Utah.
(Credit: Pornhub)Our advice to denizens of Virginia and Mississippi is the same as it was to those living in Utah: If you must access Pornhub, the best way to do so is probably with a VPN. Although we cannot confirm that it will work, the fact that we were able to encounter Pornhub's block while using a VPN suggests that a VPN can also be used to subvert it.
To do so, simply use the VPN app of your choice to connect to a server that is not in a location currently blocked by Pornhub. This would be most US states, but another country may work as well. You're more likely to have better browsing speeds if you connect to a nearby server, so we suggest trying to find a VPN server in a neighboring state. Our list of the best VPNs is a great place to start if you don't have a VPN subscription, but there are also free VPNs and cheap VPNs worth considering if budget is an issue.
Just as with Pornhub's protest of Utah, we also encourage readers to consider the larger issues at play, and not merely try to go about their business consuming pornography, as we discuss below.
Original Story (5/2/2023):Utah is the latest state to adopt an age-verification law, which requires websites that carry adult content to ensure that visitors are over the age of 18. In protest, Pornhub has blocked those located in Utah from accessing its site. They instead see a statement encouraging them to contact their elected officials.
Tech-savvy web users know there are ways around location-based blockades. If you're trying to watch porn safely in the Beehive State, here are some tricks to try before crossing state lines for an adult content fix.
How to Access Pornhub in Utah
Before I begin, I must stress that I am not in Utah and have not been able to verify that my advice will work. More importantly, while this advice can be used to potentially get around Pornhub's embargo of the state, it could also be used to avoid the very age-restriction requirements that Pornhub is protesting. Please know that I am not a legal scholar and cannot advise you on the risks of trying to circumvent the law.
With that out of the way, the easiest way to access Pornhub in Utah is with a virtual private network (VPN). When you switch on a VPN, your web traffic is routed through an encrypted connection to a server operated by the VPN company. That server could be in a different state or a different country from you. Because your web traffic exits that server, it appears as if you are browsing the web from wherever the server is.
So, if you're in Utah, you should connect to a VPN server that's not located in Utah, and then navigate to Pornhub as usual. I recommend that you also use incognito mode while streaming pornography, to prevent the sensual URLs from showing up in your browser's history and autocomplete options.
I used a VPN to connect to a server in Utah and loaded up Pornhub. Instead of the usual collection of adult material, I saw the protest message from the company. This suggests to me that the reverse—being in Utah and connecting to an out-of-state server—should work.
Which VPN Should You Use?
Nearly all VPN services will let you specify the country where you want your traffic to appear. Some will let you pick down to the city level. A few let you see a list of the actual servers themselves, and their locations, and make your choice that way.
US-based Pornhub viewers will probably want to use a VPN server that's located in the US. I recommend a VPN that will at least let you choose servers in a specific US state. Do note that latency will increase and browsing speed decrease when using a VPN, and that the impact will be more noticeable the further away the VPN server is from you.
PCMag's top-rated VPN Editors' Choice winner, Proton VPN, shows the cities and specific servers available to customers. It also offers an excellent free VPN, but your server choice will be far more limited—there are servers in the US, but you can't specify which to use. Fortunately, the free version has no time or data limit.
Another good choice is Editors' Choice winner TunnelBear VPN. This VPN is extremely easy to use and lets you select specific cities within the US and Canada. TunnelBear VPN also has a free VPN, but you'll be limited to just 500MB of bandwidth per month. If you post online about TunnelBear VPN, that cap can be raised to 1.5GB per month.
Other Editors' Choice-winning VPNs that let you select cities include IVPN, Mullvad VPN, NordVPN, and Surfshark VPN. Note that IVPN and Mullvad VPN use a privacy-protecting account number system that requires very little personal information, and both will accept cash sent to their respective HQs for a nearly anonymous experience.
You Should Still Pay Attention!
Now that you can (potentially) get around Pornhub's protest and possibly (while accepting any risk and not holding PCMag accountable) Utah's age requirement, I encourage you to pay attention to why this is happening.
Several states are putting laws forward that, like Utah's, require people to verify their age with government-issued ID before visiting some websites—typically pornographic sites. When I wrote about a similar law in Louisiana, I said it was unenforceable, likely to create opportunities for phishing and identity theft, and also was based on specious grounds. From that article, which references text of the Louisiana legislation:
We should always be skeptical of vague "think of the children" arguments—especially when they apply to privacy—but there are several terms in the legislation that leap out as deeply questionable. "Sex addiction" isn't a real thing, as Mashable reported in an excellent piece. And the "may" in "pornography may also impact brain development" is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting.
If you value a free and open internet where consenting adults are free to access whatever legal content they wish, free from state-backed stigma, do more than just unblock Pornhub. Contact your local legislators, and tell them not to support such laws.