Comment by jimbob45
2 months ago
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...
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.
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=prenda
I don't doubt that it happens, but I am asking about why. What's the thinking process?
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
> 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.
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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?
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> if you have nothing to hide
We have everything to hide to you.
The mandate is ancient.
people have things they don't want everyone to know. how is wanting a small amount of privacy ridiculous?
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?
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> 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.
> 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.
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.