When she saw that Pornhub was disabling access in Texas, Express VPN privacy advocate Lauren Hendry Parsons’s reaction was rooted in what she’s seen the past few years.
“Honestly, all I thought was, here we go again,” Parsons said.
Texas was the latest state to see Pornhub pull access to its content for people logging on from people in the state. But there is a workaround for people looking to access that content: VPNs.
A VPN is a virtual private network that hides a user’s IP address, which means the location of the user also is hidden and they can operate their device as if they aren’t in the location they are currently residing.
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Parsons, who is based in London, said Express VPN wants to encourage thoughtful solutions for ways to protect people’s rights on the internet.
She said the situation over age verification reminds her of music festivals. At music festivals she has attended, security check IDs before people enter the venue. People of age to drink then receive a wristband, and they never have to have their IDs checked again during the event.
Parsons says trying to translate a system like that, where your ID gets you a signifier and then your ID information is removed while the signifier stays, could work in the digital world.
“If you were asking me to boil it down to one thing, it would be privacy by design,” Parsons said. “Whatever the solution is — whether it’s device based, whether it’s website based, whether it’s an ID, whether it’s something independent — it’s about baking in something that does not diminish people’s digital privacy rights.”
If he keeps filing these lawsuits,, I’ll have to keep asking these questions. It’s not like he’s being transparent about his finances, after all.