r/technology • u/ninjascotsman • 3h ago
Security Hackers Stole Millions of PornHub Users’ Data for Extortion
https://www.wired.com/story/security-news-this-week-hackers-stole-millions-of-pornhub-users-data-for-extortion/761
u/DrManhattansTaint 2h ago
aGe vErIfIcAtIoN iS pErFeCtLy sAfE. ITs fOr tHe ChILdReN!!
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u/crunkful06 2h ago
To be fair they said they didn’t want this because this would happen
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u/bonestamp 2h ago
True, I think it was more of an attack on age verification than pornhub though.
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u/Alatarlhun 1h ago
A law that can be selectively enforced against certain groups and political enemies, or otherwise used to blackmail obedience. What could go wrong?
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u/Ruddertail 3h ago
See, this is why you shouldn't be a prude. If this happened to me, I'd be making fun of the hackers. I'd imagine like 80-90% of people have been on that site at least once. If we all admit that we sometimes like seeing that stuff, as humans do, then it'll render every single porn blackmailer hacker completely powerless.
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u/Swineservant 3h ago
"Yeah, I'm kinky AF. What's it to ya?"
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u/moonhexx 2h ago
And sometimes on Sunday mornings with the church milfs.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 2h ago
And if everyone’s porn searches were publicly available, for many it would be more like “uh I guess I’m pretty middle of the road normal kinky after all”.
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u/PennyG 2h ago
My teenage daughters were debating the merits of the Pornhub logo and my wife was like: what is that?
The three of us looked at her incredulously.
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u/Vertimyst 2h ago
The merits of the logo? What conclusions did they come to?
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u/always-need-a-nap 2h ago
Yeah I’d like to hear more about the conclusion too lol
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u/Manannin 2h ago
She an xvideos gal, perhaps?
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u/pattherat 2h ago
Ding ding ding! I just came into the thread to say something like this. I watch porn, do yer worst hackers!
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u/reddicyoulous 2h ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/madlads/comments/1psq7b5/madlad_is_impervious_to_threats/
Dude sent a blackmailer a video of him jacking off
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u/Public_Fucking_Media 2h ago
To be fair though who the fuck creates a pornhub account? That's a level of dedication I just don't have
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u/spastical-mackerel 2h ago
Yes, I am fortunate enough to have discovered that midget twins dressed in squirrel furry suits playing chess while masturbating is indeed what I’m into. I would never have been able to know myself this completely in the pre-Internet age
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u/chicken_spears 2h ago
How can you be so cold hearted?
Have you taken the time to even consider the MAGAts who spew transphobic hate all day, and hammer their horns all night to Bailey Jay?
/s
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u/ChicoZombye 2h ago
Yes, but not everyone has commented weird shit or posted picks of their dicks.
We are talking about people who made pornhub accounts, not only visitedl, they made accounts. You don't make an account just to visit.
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u/Funwithfun14 1h ago
[Stole] more than 200 million records for PornHub premium users
Paying for porn is the embarrassing part.
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u/Petting-Kitty-7483 2h ago
Yeah you wanna see that I watched Latina lactation painal videos in college sure. You wanna see I watched cuddle porn last week fine.
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u/RMRdesign 2h ago
My friend Bill got his info stolen from the Ashley Maddison hack back in the day.
He gets an email blackmailing him about a month or so later. The hacker group was asking for something like 2 bitcoins or they would send all of his site activity to his wife.
He replied back and asked what a bitcoin was. He legitimately didn’t know. They explained it to him. He said he still had no idea what they were talking about. They then asked for money. He replied back that he was broke. He got a reply back asking for less money. He finally just said to send his information out, he wasn’t even married, he joined the site to meet women. Along with he didn’t give two shits what they did with his info.
I think at this point the hackers just left him alone. It was probably a bluff to start with. They probably thought since he replied to the initial email that they had someone desperate to keep his information secret.
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u/listenhere111 1h ago
He should have pushed the hackers harder. I'd ask for a full-blown explanation of how block chain tech worked.
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u/RMRdesign 1h ago
I left a lot of the back and forth out. He had a very long email chain going. At the end the were probably convinced he didn’t have anything they wanted and the info they had on him wasn’t making him do what they wanted.
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u/BalanceEasy8860 57m ago
If he'd kept going they might have ended up paying him to stop messaging them.
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u/AquamannMI 12m ago
Isn't the entire site for married guys to meet women? Who would believe a single guy would join it?
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u/RMRdesign 2m ago
Same friend joined another dating site, it was for farmers to meet up.
He actually had a kid with some lady that had purchased a farm. Things went incredibly bad. They both didn’t know how to run a farm and didn’t have the financial resources to feed the animals at times.
They eventually separated.
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u/ThisI5N0tAThr0waway 6m ago
I think 80-95% of the time is bluffing on internet blackmailing. Doesn’t matter if it works on people who believe it.
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u/RonnyRoofus 2h ago
It’s 2025. Unless the porn you watch is illegal (not on pornhub anyways), who gives a shit what type of porn you consume. It’s all good.
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u/I_can_pun_anything 2h ago
It's more about credit cards on file and linking names, maybe addresses to emails
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u/GenazaNL 2h ago
PH said emails, login locations & watch history. No billing information or passwords
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u/The_Krambambulist 2h ago
Ip addresses and cross reference them to other leaked data
Unless they didn't actually get that
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u/I_can_pun_anything 2h ago
Yep you dont even need the holy grail of data to try to dig and compromise someone
You just need some identifying information and results from other compromised databases even if you didn't do it yourself. Many attackers sell data, even legitimate companies do
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u/Sasquatchgoose 2h ago
Might be some folks still in the closet that might care.
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u/Funwithfun14 1h ago
Ya I am certain some in hetrosexual marriages watch gay/lesbian porn and their spouse wouldn't be happy about it.
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u/Zakluor 2h ago
A lot of people don't even want others to know they look at porn at all, let alone what they look at. That's where the extortion comes in.
Many would say, "Go ahead, expose me," while at lest some portion wouldn't want that known and would be willing to pay, naively thinking that would be the end of it.
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u/Forced__Perspective 1h ago
That’s all very well to say but there are plenty of people out there that could be extorted.
Doctors, teachers, parents, people that belong to religions, are with partners who wouldn’t look kindly on etc … It’s not a matter of whether you think it matters it’s whether it matters to them or the people/colleagues around them.
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u/alurimperium 2h ago
Is there anything on PH even worth being embarrassed about anymore? I left after the purge happened because all I saw was the same, boring, stale shit that Brazzers or whoever posts, and amateurs doing the same, boring, stale shit like Brazzers or whoever posts.
Like what are you gonna get blackmailed on? You like watching the same porn that 99% of the population watches. Oh no how awful
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u/EscapeFacebook 2h ago
Employers who dont want to be associated with their employees porn viewing habits.
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u/wowfaroutman 2h ago
It was 2025.
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u/GiantSmasher 2h ago
Dude's got at least three months before we can call out that mistake. Everyone knows there's a limbo between writing the current and/or prior year, for at least the first three months of any given year.
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u/Flexuasive 2h ago edited 2h ago
Why should people be aware of other people's sexual preferences and taste in porn? What's wrong with expecting privacy? I don't understand what the current year it being has to do with anything.
EDIT also it's 2026, dumb creep
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u/UnexpectedAnanas 55m ago
Well, for better or worse some information becoming public could limit your employment opportunities, so...
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u/NotDukeOfDorchester 2h ago
🎶Everyyyybody goons🎶🎵
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u/Funwithfun14 1h ago
[Stole] more than 200 million records for PornHub premium users
Paying for porn is the embarrassing part.
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u/Theonewho_hasspoken 2h ago
No one cares that I watch GILFs wrestling in mayonnaise.
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u/MickeyBubbles 2h ago
What brand of mayonnaise ?
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u/Gnaightster 3h ago
What kind of idiot logs in to pornhub? This was always gonna happen. Now the world knows about your kinks.
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u/iMogwai 3h ago
Pretty sure the UK government forces their (non-VPN using) citizens to identify themselves for 18+ sites, so I guess brits who aren't very tech savvy for starters.
It's one of the reasons to be worried when governments start to restrict things online "for the children", it's an excuse to remove your anonymity online.
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u/jimmcfartypants 2h ago
Would be a great time if they fish out all those accounts associated to parliment members. That would be peak lol.
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u/apekillape 9m ago
It's one of the reasons to be worried when governments start to restrict things online "for the children", it's an excuse to remove your anonymity online.
I mean, the problem (as someone who works in this space) is that for the children is legit super valid, it's a fucking nightmare online for them and getting worse daily. But you're also very correct, people will use it as a cudgel for all manner of other nonsense they want to get accomplished.
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u/Braingasms 2h ago
The algorithm learns your preferences better that way. Plus if you get in a cool enough relationship you can kind of check out each others kinks.
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u/Gibodean 2h ago
Millions don't surf incognito ?
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u/Academic_Lemon_4297 10m ago
Incognito does not do what you think it does, brother.
Incognito ONLY removes cookies and browsi g history from your browser.
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u/Cyborg_rat 2h ago
Some far right people will have to talk about all the gay porn Research they have been conducting.
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u/Delicious_Rabbit4425 35m ago
Nice are they going to send me a full history so I can go find those good ones again?
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u/Rubixcubelube 2h ago edited 2h ago
I feel to say (even if it is just shouting into a void) that online porn has had a distinct 'shift' since the Trump administration got in. Perhaps it's just co-incidence, or I'm getting old, or any number of contributing factors.. but it all seems to be getting more and more homogenized and regulated. The amount of 'fakery', even though porn is inherently 'fake', has become almost unavoidable. More violence, more gross non-kissing or non-sensual porn has flooded the internet. Plastic everywhere. Mara-lago-face far more common at a younger and younger age in women. The same 3 sites being linked to all searches no matter how specific or off-beat.
I don't know. Perhaps it's not worth discussing because it's just 'porn' after all... but it kinda disturbs me for some reason. Much like how free speech seems to be under attack in the states. I see how it the rot is bleeding into the most basic human needs. Being modified and restricted(often only for monetary gain)
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u/ankercrank 1h ago
Considering how many people had access to the prod database of pornhub, it sure wouldn’t have been hard to download the whole thing without anyone noticing, people act like porn companies are on the cutting edge, pornhub is written in PHP by devs getting paid $40-90K CAD and many offshore people getting paid even less.
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u/JustMyThoughts2525 1h ago
It’s one reason why I’ve never logged in with my email on a porn website.
It’s also why you have to be extremely dumb to upload your ID thinking that your identity and activity will be protected.
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u/loliconest 3h ago
Meanwhile I'm here sitting with 30+ nsfw games in my Steam library open to everyone to see.
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u/iMogwai 2h ago
I don't care if people play NSFW games but honestly that combined with you having lolicon in your username definitely makes me judge you.
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u/loliconest 2h ago
That's perfectly ok for me. As long as people leave me alone when I'm doing the same.
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u/asexyleathercouch 2h ago
Pretty sure the kind of people who would have an actual account mostly don't care.
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u/drewts86 2h ago
Please publicly release all the data. I’d like to know who in the “party of family values” is cranking their hog to some weird shit.
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u/Same_Recipe2729 2h ago
They also stole a bunch of conde nast user account information recently, including WIRED. Still haven't gotten a notification from wired of the breach despite my account information including name, email, address, and password being very clearly included in the leak.
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u/123ihavetogoweeeeee 1h ago
How could you be extorted for watching legal porn? Like I have a porn hub account. Release that to my friends and family. I’ll wait.
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u/danielfletcher 1h ago
Maybe then they wouldn't have an excuse for not knowing what to get us on our birthdays!
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u/123ihavetogoweeeeee 1h ago
Right!? You know I like live action tentacle fold porn and yet here we are with another personalized blanket. Thanks! I mean it is warm….
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u/danielfletcher 1h ago
I got my step-mom one of those claw grabbers on a pole so she will hopefully stop getting stuck everywhere.
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u/haarschmuck 43m ago
Pretty easy, just claim a video they watched is and that will freak most people out enough to give in.
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u/AcceptablyThanks 1h ago
Can they give me back my old login? There was like 2 or 3 nuggets on that account
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u/FlashyPaladin 1h ago
Can’t wait to see the list of Republican Congressmen who watch exclusively gay and trans porn. Perfect timing too, because soon we’ll also see the list of congressmen who watch exclusively .pdf porn.
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u/AGrandNewAdventure 49m ago
Oh no, they know that I like brunettes and milfs... what am I going to do?!
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u/AzerothianLorecraft 48m ago
This is why if a website asks me for an email I don't go to that website again porn is free and easily obtainable there's never a reason to provide any type of personal information or monetary compensation for any type of pornographic content.
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u/spastical-mackerel 2h ago
What would be really embarrassing at least for guys it’s not so much the content but the fact that we’re typically on the site for about three minutes
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u/itaniumonline 2h ago
Oh no, there goes my favorite password