Earlier this week the United States Congress decided to repeal privacy protection laws that it had previous put into place on Internet Service Providers (ISP). While a lot of people have been wasting their time begging their representatives masters with phone calls, e-mails, and petitions, private companies have begun announcing methods to actually protect their users’ privacy. In the latest example of this, Pornhub announced that it will turn on HTTPS across its entire site:
On April 4, both Pornhub and its sister site, YouPorn, will turn on HTTPS by default across the entirety of both sites. By doing so, they’ll make not just adult online entertainment more secure, but a sizable chunk of the internet itself.
The Pornhub announcement comes at an auspicious time. Congress this week affirmed the power of cable providers to sell user data, while as of a few weeks ago more than half the web had officially embraced HTTPS. Encryption doesn’t solve your ISP woes altogether—they’ll still know that you were on Pornhub—but it does make it much harder to know what exactly you’re looking at on there.
As the article points out, your ISP will still be able to tell that you accessed Pornhub, since Domain Name Server (DNS) lookups are generally not secured, but it won’t be able to see what content you’re accessing. As for DNS lookups, solutions are already being worked on to improve their security. Projects like DNSCrypt, which provides encrypted DNS lookups, are already available.
If you want to protect your privacy you can’t rely on the State’s regulations. First, the State is the worst offender when it comes to surveillance and the consequences of its surveillance are far worse. Sure, your ISP might sell some of your data but the State will send men with guns to your home to kidnap you and probably shoot your dog. Second, as this situation perfectly illustrates, government regulations are temporary. The government implemented the privacy regulations and then took them away. It may restore them again in the future but there’s no guarantee it won’t repeal them again. Any government solution is temporary at best.
Cryptography offers a permanent solution that can protect Internet users from both their snoopy ISP and government. HTTPS and DNSCrypt will continue to work regardless of the state of privacy regulations.