The Hidden Risks Of Watching Porn Online

It’s not just those scary pop-ups you need to worry about.

Nothin’ wrong with watching adults have consensual sex! But porn sites, especially free “tube” sites, come with a lot of security risks. Here’s how to take some basic precautions.

While you may already be familiar with the perils of streaming online porn, a less experienced cyber citizen, someone who might be consuming adult content for the first time, could head to the wrong site when ~ curiosity strikes ~ and put their data or personal information at risk.

So, here are some things to know about what’s at stake when watching porn online.

Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed / Via buzzfeed.com

With plain HTTP, anyone – like hackers, the government, or snooping neighbors – sitting between your browser and the webserver can see what’s moving back and forth.

“Live cam” sites, like Chaturbate, Livejasmin, and Bongacams, are more likely to have HTTPS protections than other types of pages – but free “tube” sites (the ones that don’t require payment to watch adult content) have been slow to adopt the secure protocol. Of the top 11 adult websites in the world, according the latest Google Transparency Report, only three offer HTTPS by default: Chaturbate, xHamster, and, most recently, RedTube.

That’s alarming. HTTPS is important because it encrypts the data on a webpage, making it difficult for an interested third party to see what you’re looking at. Larger sites like Amazon, Google, and Facebook use it to give their users an extra layer of security. You can tell whether the site you’re on has HTTPS by looking for a padlock (Safari) or “Secure” (Chrome) next to the URL in your browser.

Here's what an HTTPS site looks like in Chrome.