More states lost access to Pornhub on Jan. 1 amid a battle over state age-verification laws.
In Florida and South Carolina, the adult site is now blocked—unless you try to get around it with a VPN (more on that below). They join Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
A similar law was also set to go into effect in Tennessee on Jan. 1, but a judge temporarily blocked the state from enforcing it following a lawsuit from the California-based Free Speech Coalition. As a result, Pornhub is not blocked in the state for now. But as the Free Speech Coalition notes, “private civil lawsuits and actions by individual district attorneys remain a potential threat” in Tennessee even with the delay.
Pornhub parent company Aylo previously confirmed that its sites would go dark in Florida in protest. (Aylo, formerly MindGeek—also owns YouPorn, RedTube, Brazzers, and more.)
“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 says in a statement. “Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.”
The Florida bill, HB 3, requires adult sites to verify that visitors are 18 “using either an anonymous or standard age verification method.” Anonymous ones “must be conducted by a nongovernmental, independent third party.” Florida’s attorney general can collect civil penalties of up to $50,000 per violation, reasonable attorney fees, and court costs, while minors can also pursue up to $10,000 in damages.
In Tennessee,the Protect Tennessee Minors Act requires sites to verify IDs once an hour via uploaded IDs and retain seven years of anonymized data on users who access the site, The Tennessean reports. South Carolina’s Child Online Safety Act (H. 3424)Â has similar requirements.
If you visit Pornhub in a state where the site is blocked, you’re met with a message that argues the state’s law is “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous,” like this one shared by CBS Austin political reporter Michael Adkison after the Texas block went into effect.
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“We believe that the only effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to verify users’ age on their device and to either deny or allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that verification,” the message adds. Pornhub further argues that this type of legislation will only drive people to less scrupulous sites, which “put minors and your privacy at risk.”
In addition to Tennessee, the Free Speech Coalition and a group of adult platforms, including Aylo, has also filed a legal challenge in Florida and sued in Louisiana, Texas, Utah, Indiana, and Montana. The Texas case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, will be heard by the United States Supreme Court in January 2025.
These laws “have effectively become state censorship, creating a massive chilling effect for those who speak about, or engage with, issues of sex or sexuality,” the group says.
Shielding Kids From Porn
In Texas, HB 1181 requires adult sites to verify that visitors are of age. It was set to go into effect in September 2023, but Pornhub sued and secured an early victory. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed and got a temporary reprieve in March, allowing the state to enforce HB 1181. Pornhub responded by blocking access to its site in the state a few months ago.
This battle kicked off when Pornhub blocked access in Utah over a similar age-verification law. As more states adopted these laws, Pornhub blockades followed.
In Alabama, access to Pornhub was blocked ahead of an age-verification law that went into effect on Oct. 1, AL.com reports. Under HB164, adult sites must use “reasonable age verification methods” to confirm that people are over the age of 18 and display warnings about porn being “potentially biologically addictive” and harmful to “human brain development”
In Indiana, SB17 went into effect on June 27, and requires sites that offer adult content to “use a reasonable age verification method to prevent a minor from accessing an adult-oriented website.” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita says “children shouldn’t be able to easily access explicit material that can cause them harm. It’s commonsense. We need to protect and shield them from the psychological and emotional consequences associated with viewing porn. We look forward to upholding our constitutional duty to defend this law in court.”
In Kentucky, House Bill 278 is similar and applies to sites where more than one-third of its content would be considered harmful to minors.
In North Carolina, House Bill 8 was part of a larger education bill that also covered things like adding a computer science requirement for high school graduation. But it also imposed the age-verification check for adult sites. In signing the bill last year, 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.
How to Access Pornhub in States Where It’s Blocked
The Pornhub website as it appears in Utah. (Credit: Pornhub)
When Pornhub was blocked in Utah last year, we turned to VPN services and connected to servers in Virginia and Utah. Upon navigating to Pornhub, we were greeted by the blockade message.
Recommended by Our Editors
If you’re affected by the ban, use the VPN app of your choice to connect to a server not in a location currently blocked by Pornhub. (Note that while this guidance can be used to get around Pornhub’s embargo, it could also be used to avoid the very age-restriction requirements Pornhub is protesting. We can’t advise you on the risks of trying to circumvent the law.)
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.Â
PCMag-Recommended VPN Services
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. We recommend that you also use incognito mode while streaming pornography to prevent the URLs from showing up in your browser’s history and autocomplete options.Â
If you don’t already have a VPN service installed, you can find one that will suit you in our roundup of the best VPNs for Pornhub.
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.Â
US-based Pornhub viewers will probably want to use a VPN server that’s located in the US. We 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.
Other Editors’ Choice-winning VPNs that let you select cities include IVPN, Mullvad VPN, NordVPN, and TunnelBear 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.
How to Watch Porn Online Safely
Max Eddy contributed to this story.
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About Chloe Albanesius
Executive Editor for News
