It’s been a long day at work. You’re shattered. You finally get home, dim the lights and decide it’s time to relax.
You open up your favourite porn site, with tissues at the ready, only to find that you’re blocked from accessing the homepage without sharing your personal information.
So you try and find a way around it – are there other sites you can use instead? Or do you just give up and rely on your own imagination?
For the past three months porn users have faced this same dilemma – and it’s the politicians, as usual, who are to blame.
Since the Government introduced age checks for accessing sexually explicit content under the Online Safety Act in July, the 19th most visited site on the internet has reported a sharp decline in UK visitors.
Pornhub said it’s seen a 77% drop in users from this country over the past three months.
And visits to porn sites overall have reduced by almost a third since the new rules came into force, according to Ofcom.
They said the restrictions were stopping children from being able to ‘easily stumble across porn without searching for it’.
The watchog said: ‘Our new rules end the era of an age-blind internet, when many sites and apps have undertaken no meaningful checks to see if children were using their services.’
Users previously had an on-screen notification requiring them to tick a box to confirm they were over 18.
Now, porn sites require users to verify their age with facial identification.
But users are still finding ways around the verification process by using VPNs (virtual private networks).
This means Pornhub’s UK traffic might not be missing – instead users accessing the site via VPNs are categorised as non-UK traffic.
Dr Hanne Stegeman from the University of Exeter told the BBC: ‘It is likely that people not wanting to verify their age or identity to access sexual content, for example because of privacy concerns, are using VPNs to get around this.
‘As the location of website visitors are usually determined through IP addresses, it could be that those figures are inaccurate when a portion of visitors are using VPNs.’
Some companies are already tackling this, with NordVPN recently introducing a new tool to block explicit sites from view, called Threat Protection. But it has to be manually switched on.
Age verification checks have also raised security concerns.
Earlier this month, Aylo, which owns Pornhub, YouPorn and Redtube, said the effectiveness of the age verification checks have been ‘alarmingly limited’.
The company said this leaves children and sensitive user information at risk.
Alex Kekesi, of Aylo, said previously: ‘For years Aylo has publicly called for effective and enforceable age assurance solutions that protect minors online, while ensuring the safety and privacy of all users.
‘The United Kingdom is the first country to present these same priorities demonstrably.’
She added that ‘keeping minors off adult sites is a shared responsibility’.
Metro has approached the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology for comment.
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