PornHub has now added Texas to its blocklist, preventing users in the state from accessing its site in protest of age verification laws.
Texas' age verification bill HB 1181, passed last year, went back into effect last week after the State won an appeal against an injunction that said it violated the First Amendment.
The bill requires adult sites showing sexual material to perform age verification to confirm a visitor from Texas is 18 years old.
In February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Aylo Global Entertainment, the owner of PornHub, for not complying with the laws, seeking a $1.6 million penalty and $10,000 per day after that until the site performs the required age verification.
Last week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the law to go into effect.
They halted the requirement to display mental health notices on adult sites.
In response, Aylo has now now blocked access to its sites, including Pornhub, YouPorn, Brazzers, Men.com, and Nutaku, from visitors in Texas, displaying a message stating that the new age verification laws are ineffective and dangerous.
PornHub instead calls on states to require device-based age verification through a device's operating system, such as iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows.
The adult content company says that requiring users to share their information with multiple age verification companies only puts visitors' data at increased risk of their sensitive information being leaked in data breaches.
Instead, PornHub says that operating system developers should be responsible for conducting age verification and passing that information to sites that require it.
While centralizing age verification to a select few companies would reduce the risk to consumers, it would increase the risk for OS developers who now have a large bucket of sensitive information to protect.
These laws have been shown to push people to purchase VPNs to bypass geographic restrictions by adult sites.
According to a report by RStreet, some state laws require adult sites to prevent the bypassing of geo restrictions, potentially forcing them to block all VPN traffic.
PornHub has previously blocked access to its site over age verification laws to visitors in Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Montana, and Utah.
This Cyber News was published on www.bleepingcomputer.com. Publication date: Fri, 15 Mar 2024 17:15:16 +0000