The UK’s controversial Digital Economy Act 2017 means that porn fans in the UK will have to prove their age before accessing their favourite sites. So in order to continue browsing porn, users will be asked to hand over personal information such as a phone number, passport, driving license or a ‘citizen card’.
Do you want to hand that information over to a porn site or have a record of your porn viewing habits? No. Neither do we. So at Sugarcookie we put together this handy guide on how to bypass age verification on your favourite porn sites and protect your privacy.
As porn fans ourselves we’re worried about handing over personal information to adult sites. It’s not that we don’t trust other adult sites. We do. Some of our best friends own adult sites and they’re great people.
It’s just that having a huge database of what porn we watch linked to our IDs and personal information seems like a huge invasion of privacy.
Remember the Ashley Madison hack? Just imagine the consequences of something similar happening in porn. How many ways could that information be used against you?
Sadly there has already been a good example of what can happen when your porn viewing habits are made public. This porn company tried to publicly humiliate people into settling copyright violations for huge amounts of money.
There is currently no age verification method in place that we would feel comfortable using ourselves. In fact some AV software has be shown to not even protect children with this Twitter user verifying his age with a fake credit card number.
Until we are 100 per cent confident that there is no way user information could get leaked or hacked we won’t be implementing age verification on our site. Which means one way or another you will lose access to our sister porn site Sugarcookie.xxx and up to 4 million other adult sites around the web.
Bypassing age verification and blocked porn sites
So what do you do if you want to access your favourite porn site and the site is blocked or you don’t want to hand over the information required to verify your age?
The UK is not the first country in the world to ban porn. In censoring pornography from the internet it seems we are following the highly enlightened and liberal examples of China, India, Turkey, Russia and Iran.
In those countries people still access porn according to traffic statistics from other porn sites. So the easiest way is to continue viewing your favourite porn safely is to copy what internet users in those countries do.
VPN
This is the simplest and most effective solution for accessing blocked porn sites. It’s an easy way of tricking websites into thinking you are browsing from another country. So all you do is pick a VPN location that does not censor porn.
A VPN creates a encrypted connection between you and the VPN. This means that all the government or your ISP see is that you are connecting to a VPN. They don’t even know you are viewing porn. The only way they can block it is if they block the VPN.
I highly recommend VPNs as a way to protect your privacy when using the internet. There are so many available that it’s hard to say which is best. Some are free plugins for your browser or phone apps while others are more premium services with a whole host of fancy features for browsing the web anonymously without slowing down your connection.
At Sugarcookie we use VPNs when we are working remotely. Public wifi in coffee shops, airports, etc. often blocks porn so we use a VPN so we can access our website and write articles like this one. If you connect public wifi often you should consider getting a VPN anyway to maintain your privacy.
If you want a personal recommendation, we use NordVPN. It may or may not be the best VPN but we have found it fast, reliable, easy to use and supportive of a free and open internet.
DNS Server
It’s not very likely that this method will work but it’s worth covering as it’s so easy to do and we don’t know how strict or what method of blocking the UK government and ISPs will enforce.
Let’s say that internet blocking is at DNS level then all you have to do is change some settings on your computer or phone to override their DNS level blocking. There may be some speed benefits to doing this regardless of whether this type of blocking is in place or not.
At Sugarcookie we recommend using Google Open DNS. It’s super reliable and has some easy to follow setup guides.
Tor
This project is at the forefront of the fight for online civil liberties. Tor is something you should read more about and consider supporting if you believe that information should be shared online without the threat of censorship or recriminations.
It is normally used by dissidents in places that lack human rights and freedom or speech like Iran and China as well as by media organisations to protect their sources. It’s incredibly important.
For you it means that you can browse the internet anonymously. It does this by funnelling your internet traffic through an encrypted connection via its global network. Most likely through an uncensored locations which magically unblocks sites you cannot access.
The downside is that it will probably be slower than regular web browsing but on the upside, it will work even when other options fail.
Proxy
Proxies are similar to VPNs but not as reliable. They come in many varieties. The benefit is that they are the quickest to get started with and there are hundreds, maybe thousands of options available.
They maybe at browser or system wide level. They may even be setup online for a specific site or as a way of letting you browse all of the web privately. The downside is that they are often funded by ads. But what’s more intrusive, dealing with ads or handing over personal information?
Many blocked sites rely on proxies to keep going. In fact, The Pirate Bay famously got more visitors after being blocked than before. Probably due to all the proxies maintained by fans.
SSH Tunnels
I must admit that we’ve never used these. I put them on the list as some people may already have them for work or simply because they’re uber-geeks. If you are going to pay for a service to bypass porn censorship, a VPN is probably a cheaper and more reliable option.
But if you already have an SSH server, why not make use of it? You can create an SSH tunnel with PuTTY on Windows or with the SSH command on other platforms.
Social media
Blocked websites are simply going to become a feature of UK internet life and these tips should help you get around the blocks. But it’s worth noting that there are lots of gaps in the Digital Economy Act 2017.
For example, social media sites are not affected. You can access as much porn as you like on Reddit or Twitter so it’s always worth following your favourite sites and companies on social sites. You will never be completely cut off.
Plus with 4 million porn sites and growing on the web. It won’t be possible to block everything. With a little luck, the UK government will just quietly forget about this law as time goes on. Hopefully before too much harm is done.
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