Pornhub is banned in 17 US states leaving tens of millions without access… is your state one of them?

Tens of millions of Americans are locked out of Pornhub due to a fight over privacy laws.

Pornhub’s parent company Aylo has banned people in 17 states from accessing the adult site due to new age verification laws.

The 17 states, all located in the South or Midwest, recently began requiring users to provide state-approved identification, such as a passport or driver’s license, to prove they are over 18 to access content .

States first began enacting the legislation in 2023 amid growing political concerns about minors viewing inappropriate online material.

But Pornhub and other critics argue that the age verification requirement violates users’ privacy and puts their personal information at risk.

The states where Pornhub is blocked are: Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Indiana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Florida.

“Aylo has publicly supported user age verification for years,” a company spokesperson said.

‘But we believe that any law in this area must ensure the safety and privacy of users and effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults.

“Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard and dangerous.

“Any regulation that requires hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information jeopardizes the safety of users.”

When users in one of the blocked states try to access Pornhub or similar sites, they will instead see a message from adult performer Cherie Deville stating that access has been blocked for their own safety.

But it seems that residents of blocked states are already looking for a loophole, namely through the use of VPNs.

Pornhub is now inaccessible in 17 US states where more than 18 age verification laws have prompted the site’s parent company, Aylo, to completely block access to its sites

A VPN, or virtual private network, is an online service that encrypts your data and masks your IP address to create a more secure connection between your device and the internet.

VPNs allow users to mask their real location and pretend to be somewhere they are not, by routing their web traffic through a server in that alternate location.

A VPN user in Florida can trick a website into thinking they are in New York, or anywhere else in the world. So this is the most effective solution for people in states where Pornhub is banned.

A report from VPNMentor’s cybersecurity and research lab shows that VPN use in Florida increased by 1,150 percent within hours of the age verification law going into effect on January 1.

Similar, albeit smaller, spikes have occurred in other affected states, including a 967 percent increase in Utah and a 234 percent increase in Texas in 2023.

But there are some data and device security risks associated with using VPNs.

While these networks are generally safe, you can’t trust all of them. Data sent through a third-party server is always at risk of being compromised, and the VPN’s proprietary software may contain malware or viruses, according to the IT company Devoteam.

It’s possible that more states will see age restriction laws on adult entertainment take effect after President-elect Donald Trump takes office later this month.

Project 2025, drawn up by the far-right think tank Heritage Foundation, outlines plans to criminalize and ban pornography under the Trump administration.

The document argues that porn has no First Amendment protection, going so far as to say that porn producers and distributors should be jailed, and tech companies that circulate it should be shut down.

Whether the Trump administration will actually try to achieve this, and succeed, remains to be seen.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Pornhub and Aylo for comment.