After Pornhub left France, this VPN saw a 1,000% surge in signups in 30 minutes
187 comments
·June 7, 2025ghusto
callamdelaney
This is the only true solution. Parents need to take responsibility for what their kids are doing online, what they’re viewing and who they’re talking to. This generation of parents should be prepared for that but apparently not.
ryeats
I tried to block YouTube when my kids were remote learning during the pandemic, it took several attempts and they were in grade school. They even got around Apple's considerable content controls I had to set up a DNS proxy.
lacker
At my son's school they recently started blocking ChatGPT, not because kids were using it to cheat, but because kids kept asking ChatGPT how to get around the content controls, and it would constantly find new ways to proxy or evade.
paxys
My condolences, you are raising software engineers.
trilbyglens
Best way is to block at the router.
derefr
I think this approach made a lot of sense in the 2000s and 2010s, when consumer electronics with internet access were expensive things well out of reach of a child unless given to them by a parent.
But we're in an era now where cell phones and tablets — especially used + low-spec ones — are something that even a young child can acquire en masse: from their friends at school, or from any mall kiosk or convenience store with their allowance, etc.
You can put all the parental controls you like on the nice phone you buy your child — but how do you put parental controls on the four other phones you have no idea they own?
(Before you say "search their room" — they could leave them in their desk at school, charging them with a battery bank they charged at home or got a friend to charge for them; and then use them with free public wi-fi rather than locked-down school wi-fi. This doesn't require any particular cleverness; it's the path of least resistance!)
If you ask me "well, what do we do, then?"... I have no idea, honestly.
zemvpferreira
Like with anything, you need to do a proper job educating your kids before trusting safeguards to keep them safe. That would be my bet for a scalable solution.
Some kids will still drown, it’s unavoidable. But swimming lessons are much more effective at preventing drowning deaths than fences.
TacticalCoder
[dead]
amriksohata
This never happens tho - parents dont sometimes even know how to use the tech. Its like giving a gun to a child and telling them its ok, just remember when you open the packaging to take the safety off.
...and oh yeh the safety software changes every few months so you will have to review it
stanford_labrat
I’m sorry who is who in this analogy. Because if internet/tech is the gun then the clear solution is “not giving your children guns”.
Bad modern parents just give their kids an iPad.
callamdelaney
Apparently the average age of mothers is 30 - these parents should understand the risks of technology having be exposed to it themselves but we don’t seem to be seeing improvement in this area like we might expect.
godelski
> Its like giving a gun to a child and telling them its ok
I get your point and I think you're right, but I'd suggest a different analogy or lean in a bit more saying give it to a young child with no training.
The irony is The South is where these porn laws are happening...
ulbu
default to parental guidance enabled.
closewith
Okay, should bars and off licenses be able to sell alcohol to 10 year olds? Cigarettes? Should that be the responsibility of parents to control, too?
Or do we continue with the long held legislative reality that you are responsible for the goods and services that you unlawfully provide to children?
healsdata
Your analogy is faulty and doesn't hold up to the basic scrutiny.
Whoever is giving the child access is responsible, not the manufacturer. If a parent gives their child a device capable of accessing the internet with no restrictions, that's on the parent.
Pornhub is manufacturing a product and making it available to the open market, just like Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels has no responsibility to ensure a bar is only providing access to legal patrons.
In your analogy, the bar would be equivalent to a internet cafe or public library that has PCs available to patrons. Those types of businesses should definitely use physical IDs to verify patrons are of age.
To make your analogy work for Pornhub, you'd also have to argue "why shouldn't Jack Daniels have to put age-verifying instant blood tests on their bottles in case a parent puts one in their unlocked liquor cabinet?"
Because then the same concerns arise -- why should Jack Daniels be given access to my blood just to manufacture an age-restricted product? What will they do with it? Will they secure the data appropriately? How do I know it won't be used to negatively impact my future because my health insurance company doesn't like that I drank a bottle of JD?
tonymet
How is this passive aggression? “You’re not using porn, because I say so, and you’re not using a computer without a porn filter, because I bought it”
That’s not passive aggression, that’s responsible parenting and clear boundaries.
healsdata
I read it as the author being passive aggressive -- they're implying the problem is parents who, instead of learning how to manage what their children can do with electronic devices, just want the government to make bad things illegal.
But, you know, we've never been able to agree as a people on what "bad things" are. So it should be, as you said, for each parent to engage in setting boundaries and being responsible.
pishpash
"Because I say so" is a weak ass argument, no argument at all. "Because I bought it" is passive aggressive, because you do not intend to allow even if you did not buy it.
LPisGood
It’s not an argument it’s just a statement of fact. “You can’t do this because I bought it” explains what (you can’t do X without Y) and why (I own Y and can therefore control the use of Y).
Now, it doesn’t explain why the decision was made in the first place to enforce a porn filter as a requirement for using the device, but again - it’s not an argument.
I agree that it doesn’t provide a complete explanation because as you mention, if the child bought their own device there would still be restrictions, but that wasn’t the case being discussed.
tonymet
It’s not an argument, it’s a command.
You’re not convincing your kids that you are right. You are reminding them of the consequences if they disagree.
diggan
> "and having offshore porn sites or any other third parties collect IDs from adults and becoming a repository of potential blackmail material comes with its own risks [...] A more technically sound approach would be content controls directly implemented on the devices parents chose to give their children" said the company's (Proton's) spokesperson
While I agree with their second point, the first argument sounds a bit overly dramatic, considering how the implementation seems to work. They couldn't blackmail, as the information they receive is limited.
As far as I understand how at least one of the methods for verification must be, is “double-anonymity” or "double-blind" protocol: the site never sees the user’s identity, the verifier never learns which site is being visited, and only a yes/no “18+” token is exchanged. Then other methods could be offered too.
Although if we assume the average security competence with these types of companies, handling ID documents and stuff, they'll surely get hacked sooner or later. So maybe the link between porn site and identity isn't there, but your personal data that been submitted to them will yet again float out there.
paxys
Their proposed alternative is even worse IMO. Even if you can figure out some privacy-safe way of doing on-device age verification, the end result will be a web that only works if you are browsing from an "approved" client - i.e. a platform controlled by Apple, Google or Microsoft.
jeroenhd
Not necessarily. You need some source of truth (i.e. government ID) to sign digital tokens representing attributes like "18+". Those tokens are uploaded to those websites.
The risk becomes "kids loading their parents' ID into their phones" but with decent digital ID that shouldn't be a problem.
Yivi already solves this problem. It's being used as a basis for an implementation of a European digital ID of sorts, though I'm still sceptical of the European side of things.
The app works on any device because the device doesn't do anything special. All it does is POST some signed token if the user clicks "approve".
I suppose this can be a problem in the US where people hate the idea of digital government ID for some reason, but that's a political problem, not a technical one. France already has a digital ID equivalent for use with government services, as do all other EU member states in their own way, so the source of these tokens is practically ready to go.
cocoto
There could easily be a web standard to allow/disallow NSFW content and the web browsers could broadcast this flag based on settings at OS level similarly to the light/dark theme setting at OS level that can be used by websites and it works on all OS/web browsers implementing this trivial feature.
lucianbr
> “double-anonymity” or "double-blind" protocol: the site never sees the user’s identity, the verifier never learns which site is being visited, and only a yes/no “18+” token is exchanged.
Isn't this an actually reasonable solution? I assumed age verification was supposed to be done by the site itself, and therefore it was considered a very bad idea. But this... what's the problem with this method?
baby_souffle
> But this... what's the problem with this method?
You're just hoping that there's never a leak of any UUID(s) that could be used to correlate things. The ad-tech industry has pioneered de-anonymization tech and they're very, very good at it.
Tangential question: if the principal is divorced from the "is not a minor" signal, what prevents a thrifty youth from just buying/stealing somebody's token?
sltkr
First, intentionally leaking this type of data is extremely illegal under Europe's strict privacy laws. So we are limited to unintentional breaches of privacy which can be guarded against with auditing requirements.
Second, you have to look at the potential damage such a leak would have on the affected porn watchers. Is it really that damaging to your reputation if someone could prove that you visited Pornhub in the last year? Isn't it a common view that all men and most women watch porn at least occasionally anyway?
And I get the risk if you live in a country that criminalizes pornography. But are were sure there is an extreme societal taboo on enjoying erotic cinema in the notoriously puritanical country of... checks notes France?
Third, it's important to consider the baseline. If you are a citizen of France and you are accessing Pornhub via your residential ISP or your mobile phone, then your ISP already knows you are visiting Pornhub. This isn't concerning to anyone but the thickest thin-foil-hat wearing paranoid schizophrenics, and I've never heard of this leading to massive data breaches or blackmail situations either.
Given that ISPs appear to be basically trustworthy, they might as well do the age verification thing, too. They probably already have your personal info due to KYC-legislation.
Of course there are small differences: with age verification your ISP can distinguish between you and other people in your household, which removes a bit of plausible deniability. If you don't trust your ISP you can use alternate DNS-over-HTTPS, VPNs, proxys like Tor, etc. to cover your tracks, which you wouldn't be able to do anymore. But I bet 99,99% of Pornhub visitors in France don't bother with any of that, proving that they aren't actually concerned about being blackmailed or outed as porn consumers by their ISP.
Sayrus
What prevents someone from buying, stealing or photoshopping an ID card?
I'd guess the same issue would be present with selling tokens.
lucianbr
> You're just hoping that there's never a leak of any UUID(s) that could be used to correlate things.
No. For any technology you could argue I'm just hoping it won't fail. If I fly with a plane, I'm just hoping it won't crash, right?
In fact, there would be security measures making it less likey that there is a leak. I am literally not "just hoping".
Now those security measures might fail of course. But what are the probabilities? That matters.
> The ad-tech industry has pioneered de-anonymization tech and they're very, very good at it.
Please explain how this does not apply to opening pornhub on my computer right now, with zero age verification systems. I think it applies perfectly, and so it is not an actual argument in this discussion.
JCattheATM
It depends how solid the implementation is, and what the competency reputation of the government implementing it is.
lucianbr
Well, we can't refuse a system or a technology on the basis of "depends". Your physical safety when traveling anywhere by any means depends on many factors. You still leave the house, don't you? Even if you don't, most rational people do, daily.
landl0rd
If the only thing that verifier does is verification for accessing digital pornography, it remains blackmail-able. Not in the sense of identifying the specific content accessed but in the sense of "this user has gone through the steps to gain access" which is, frankly, good enough.
After verifying the ID, there is no reason the verifier needs to know to whom a token belongs, which would help this. It doesn't need to be repudiatable in practice because the security risk of a leak is near 0 and nobody ages backwards.
sltkr
The solution to that is to make sure the age verification is used for a variety of different purposes.
For example, why not use the same age verification system to block access to sites that advertise or sell alcohol or tobacco products? Or sex toys. Or dating apps. Or loans applications. Or for any number of adult-only apps that aren't necessarily blackmailable? Normalize age verification for adult-only services.
That provides people with plausible deniability. “Oh, I wasn't looking at porn! I was just trying to find the perfect brandy to buy as a business gift.” or “Oh, I was just trying to get a quote to refurnish my apartment on credit.”
littlestymaar
Threatening someone to tell people “There's a high likelyhood that X watches porn” is a blackmail-worthy threat IMHO.
Unless you have access to someone's specific kinks or routine (how often does he/she watches porn, for how long), you're no going to scare many people.
Facebook has these information by the way, thanks to the “like buttton” scattered everywhere (at least for people who don't browse porn in private mode, but having done IT support in college, I can tell you there are many people who don't).
manquer
Is it though? In this day and age I would think that someone who doesn’t watch porn is in the minority, it is like saying this person has sex.
On the other hand what kind of pornography, or how frequently and so on could be social pressure , same as what kind of fetishes or kind of sex or with type of person/gender, most people aren’t that sex positive to talk openly about.
jpalawaga
(The VPN service is Proton VPN, for those coming directly to the comments.)
pkkkzip
why this VPN in particular?
mplanchard
I’d guess many did, and this is just the one being reported on
layer8
Because this VPN provider tweeted about it.
jajko
Its a Swiss one, so compared to some sites its probably in French out of box. Has a good reputation, located in country that doesn't take much bullshit from EU or given government (Albeit some of it is good, this is not).
Also cares more about privacy than most other countries globally (if folks grokked what "numbered account" meant then there wouldn't be so much baseless hate about how "Swiss took all jewish and nazi money and profit from it till today and that's core of their prosperity".
Couldn't be further from truth, I live here and watch these matters closely from both inside and outside perspectives.
Weryj
I wouldn't worry about the VPN's, the 8 year olds aren't going to get one. On mass, it'll be successful, but I'd be more worried about social media than the usual porn sites for early exposure.
walthamstow
Fascinating that France is PH's second-biggest market, presumably after the US.
sltkr
How is that surprising?
After the US, the three largest Western countries are Germany (which already banned Pornhub), the UK and France, but the UK and France are virtually tied in terms of population, so it was always going to be a tossup between the two.
dakiol
Always wondered why latin america is not considered the "western" world (it surely is not on the east side of... whatever mark you put in the world. Actually if one uses the greenwich meridian, that would leave countries like Germany on the "east" side of the world).
pishpash
Western world = prior colonial powers and their vassal states. Non-Western world = prior colonies that became independent.
vips7L
Economics and sadly race.
phit_
what makes you think it's banned in Germany?
sltkr
https://netzpolitik.org/2025/porno-streit-vor-gericht-darf-d...
Skimming this it sounds like pornhub is/was at least partially blocked on the ISP level. Not sure about the extent of the blockage today but I could imagine that these blocks put a dent in their user numbers.
toomanylogins
it was always going to be a tossup between the two.
UK slang and this context give this a very relevant double meaning. Well played if this was intentional!
toomanylogins
it was always going to be a tossup between the two.
UK slang and this context give this a very relevant double meaning. Well played if this was intentional!
thm
Savoir-vivre.
JodieBenitez
Because apparently french parents can't handle the education of their children.
it_citizen
Clearly they cannot. They had already banned selling alcohol to kids.
mirekrusin
Drugs too. Doesn't seem to stop ones that want to do it though by looking at some neighbourhoods.
nashashmi
It does stop kids from being openly advertised drugs and makes it difficult for kids to get drugs. That is the whole point of legislation, not to eliminate but mitigate.
mdp2021
Given that incompetent families will always exist,
you ban drugs because of the social consequences of the phenomenon - the damages are evaluated as high.
For other indulgences, social damages may vary.
hk1337
Pornography isn’t an education tool. If anything, it hinders education by setting unrealistic expectations.
SpicyLemonZest
There's a big cultural gap here. To people who are concerned about porn, it's like asking why we have to stop children from buying handles of vodka.
Can't you just educate them to avoid drinking to excess? No, you can't, they don't have that level of self-control yet.
Isn't it unfair to the responsible bakers who just want a really tender pie crust? Yes, it is, but they're going to have to deal with it.
Won't a determined kid still be able to get their hands on alcohol? Yes, they will, but it matters that they get it less often and less frequently.
ghusto
> Can't you just educate them to avoid drinking to excess? No, you can't, they don't have that level of self-control yet
This is not only untrue, it's actually the only worthwhile course.
I know that bans, rules, and technical solutions are not substitutes for parenting. This is why all the kids of the parents I know who have tried that are doing all the supposedly disallowed things secretly (and circumventing the technical restrictions with ease).
mdp2021
It's shocking to read opinions that kids would not «have that level of self-control». Children can display self-control... And of course they can.
(Just a tiny example: in many countries, we have them study since the age of five, sometimes earlier. They already have a sufficiently working anterior cingulate gyrus at and before that age; they have understanding of tradeoffs at and before that age.)
--
Ooooh, hitters that will probably reveal to be snipers. That just confirms the point: if some people think it normal to gesticulate and not formulate - well, that's them, not all... Some children will have a weaker will. Some will have a stronger one! And surely it can be educated.
mdp2021
Alchool is poison. If you handle it maturely, it remains an intoxicant.
Chocolate should be eaten with restraint. If you handle it maturely, it remains something not that comparable to alchool.
SpicyLemonZest
Right. The question is whether porn is poisonous, and many people (myself included) genuinely feel the answer is yes. Mature, responsible adults can often ration their consumption enough to avoid too many negative effects - as they do with alcohol - but even adults sometimes fail and for children it's much harder.
SkiFire13
> it's like asking why we have to stop children from buying handles of vodka
I would argue that part of the answer is because with vodka they can easily harm themselves. However this doesn't hold for porn.
mdp2021
> with vodka they can easily harm themselves
And others.
Which is relevant, because other resources (e.g. those relevant here) can reduce or abate sexual misconduct, for many, or maybe boost it for some - depending on the profile. Some will be satisfied (and stay at that), some other will be kindled.
Barrin92
>Yes, they will, but it matters that they get it less often and less frequently.
but they won't. Alcohol restrictions are at least somewhat enforceable (although as a sidenote I also find them silly) but you can open a new tab, literally type "porn" into any search engine, and you'll get fifty thousand results.
And all of those sites are hosted in the middle of nowhere and do zero content moderation compared to Pornhub, so chances are on those sites adolescents will run into some genuinely abhorrent content. You've made it no less difficult, but much less safe.
It's so utterly meaningless even compared to other internet bans, it makes more sense to assume they just banned something so that people would stop talking about it. It's as if someone was on a crusade against video games, banned literally one video game
jaoane
[flagged]
nichol4s
Another service which tries to fill this gap with a unique offering is https://getadultpass.com/
They basically add 'verification headers' to the original website through a proxy solution, allowing visitors to browse sites with some level of age verification regardless of their location. They are more focused on the 'privacy aspect'.
brunoborges
I am surprised Pornhub hasn't acquired a VPN company yet...
FlyingBears
Then you can prove collusion to circumvent whatever legislation is there.
sitzkrieg
and im surprised pornhub is still the de facto normie smut site but here we are
jimbob45
It’s smart to be using a VPN for any sort of adult internet use these days anyway. Vixen Media Group is extorting people by threatening to leak their identity if they don’t pay up[0]. And not by a 3rd-party collections company either - it’s their own parent company making the demands.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vixen_Media_Group#Legal_action
https://www.reddit.com/r/VPNTorrents/comments/1d3wfiz/my_exp...
loeg
> Vixen Media Group is extorting people by threatening to leak their identity if they don’t pay up[0].
This is specifically people who pirate their IP over public bittorrent; not paying customers.
david-gpu
Why does anybody care that their porn viewing habits become public? To me it sounds as ridiculous as somebody threatening to publish a log of the food we eat or the music we listen to.
perihelions
Empirically, there's a sizeable market of people willing to pay thousands to keep their porn viewing from becoming public. Prenda Law[0,1] was an extortion racket that blackmailed people with their porn history, and demanded in the region of $4,000 per victim. Their total revenue was at least $15 million, that the courts could find.
david-gpu
I don't doubt that it happens, but I am asking about why. What's the thinking process?
macintux
Porn is considered a highly private activity for many reasons: societal disapproval, religious prohibitions...heck in some countries, watching gay porn is potentially a death sentence.
david-gpu
I get wanting to keep illegal activities unknown to the authorities, so I'll concede that.
But in the context of this thread, where a company was threatening to do this in a developed democratic country, that is not an issue, is it?
Societal disapproval can be divided between people you interact with and strangers. Why would anybody what strangers think of them, particularly when those strangers would have to been rummaging into porn watching databases to begin with?
As for coworkers, friends or family, why would they be interested in learning about your porn habits again? And if they bother you about it, wouldn't you want to rethink whether you want to keep them around? Personally, I don't keep in touch with people who seriously judge my life choices -- and that has only happened once, so it's not such a big deal either.
Yeul
As recent events have proven we cannot be sure that a bunch of religious conservatives won't come into power.
I am a member of a leftist political party in my country and I have no doubt that if the fascists get their hands on the membership database I'm shipped off to a prison camp.
coolio1232
Why have privacy if you have nothing to hide?
On another note, a lot of places, including those in the west will ostracize you for listening to the wrong music or eating the wrong foods.
baby_souffle
> On another note, a lot of places, including those in the west will ostracize you for listening to the wrong music or eating the wrong foods.
Some groups will, yes. In a lot of cases it's just simple hypocrisy; lots of "anti-gay" congressmen somehow keep getting caught soliciting sex in airport bathrooms or on grinder.
david-gpu
Why would you care about remaining in good terms with somebody who would ostracize you for listening to the wrong music or eating the wrong food? Is that a person that deserves your friendship?
mdp2021
> if you have nothing to hide
We have everything to hide to you.
The mandate is ancient.
azrrik
people have things they don't want everyone to know. how is wanting a small amount of privacy ridiculous?
david-gpu
Why would anybody even want to know the porn you watch? And what would they do about it, or how would that affect you?
"Hey, Jimmy, I went searching for your porn habits and found that you are into fat redheads. Shame on you, shame on you. You are now excommunicated from... Somewhere". How is this not a much bigger social faux pas for the accuser rather than the accused?
mdp2021
> as ridiculous as somebody threatening to publish a log
And in fact, privacy laws saw slow codification because the violations they are relevant to are largely preposterous.
gruez
Sounds like the actual dumb move is torrenting without a VPN. Even if you're torrenting to watch prestige television, you'd still want to have a VPN to avoid getting sued. On the flip side, I don't think anyone got sued from watching pirated porn from a streaming site.
littlestymaar
I don't even understand why people bother, given that there a millions of porn sites out there, why would you stick to pornhub in particular?
null
pkkkzip
I always wonder what it takes to start a VPN? It's super saturated yet there's clear winners. Also I wonder how the operator is able to side step liability for obvious illegal use cases.
The internet has become a very hostile place and its not just surveillance but peer to peer political persecution where someone doesn't follow the script or believe the same thing they do and they lash out and try to censor them by mass reporting or DDOS
I miss the old internet where we used to escape to avoid reality, now we go offline to avoid the internet.
morkalork
Seems to be one of those commodities where some winners are only by virtue of advertising, if all the NordVPN sponsorship jokes are true. There's also sketchy providers that double-dip aren't there? Residential customers pay once for a VPN and commercial customers pay again for residential IPs used for scraping and proxying.
throe83949449
Lovely, people would go to prison, just to see some porn!
> engaging in illegal activities while using a VPN remains prohibited under French law.
https://medium.com/@green21/is-vpn-legal-in-france-exploring...
France has very stupid and strict laws, that apply accross borders! For example paternity test gets you two years, even when physically done in another country!
layer8
It’s illegal for porn sites in France to operate without imposing age verification. That doesn’t mean that it’s illegal for French residents to use porn sites without age verification.
outside1234
Wait what? You can't do a Paternity test in France?
landl0rd
Correct. I believe it has to be court-ordered and even then it's rare. DNA testing is also generally illegal unless for medical reasons. They claim this is to "uphold family peace" because "fatherhood is social, not biological". It seems incredibly wrong to me in that they are removing the father's right to choose whether to enter that social role when it is not biologically mandated.
sunshine-o
So even if requested by the mother?
Because I was once shocked to learn how easily it is in some countries (like Portugal) for a woman to have the court force a man to submit to a paternity test [0].
I also heard (I guess a few decades ago) the courts would start automatically an investigation on their own when no man would recognise a child at birth.
- [0] https://www.tpalaw.pt/xms/files/BANGA_Site/Paternity_investi...
jacob019
Wild. What is the rationale?
sunshine-o
Apparently to "keep the peace" and to "protect the children" but I couldn't find any good source on this.
Intuitively it seems to me this is the most counterproductive law ever as living with this doubt is the best way to destroy a family.
cocoto
Protecting the kids I think, because if the dad is not known then the mother will have to pay for the child alone (subsidized by the government). In France around 3% of kids are raised from dads not knowing that they are not the biological father. Personally I think this law is completely unfair but in practice I think the judges will not believe the one opposing the test.
seszett
You just can't order a test for someone else (your child) without their consent (so both parents, and a judge because parents don't have absolute rights over their children).
Courts order paternity tests just fine though when there is a reasonable doubt.
The people concerned can always refuse to be tested though.
throe83949449
Also in Germany and probably some other countries.
null
> A more technically sound approach would be content controls directly implemented on the devices parents chose to give their children
Passive aggression level 10, and I approve.