Utah

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Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

adult content, adult entertainment, age verification, arkansas, aylo, child safety, idaho, Identity theft, Indiana, kansas, Kentucky, lousiana, mississippi, montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, phishing, Policy, pornhub, texas, Utah, Virginia / /

“Uphill battle” —

The number of states blocked by Pornhub will soon nearly double.

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Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Pornhub will soon be blocked in five more states as the adult site continues to fight what it considers privacy-infringing age-verification laws that require Internet users to provide an ID to access pornography.

On July 1, according to a blog post on the adult site announcing the impending block, Pornhub visitors in Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, and Nebraska will be “greeted by a video featuring” adult entertainer Cherie Deville, “who explains why we had to make the difficult decision to block them from accessing Pornhub.”

Pornhub explained that—similar to blocks in Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, and Mississippi—the site refuses to comply with soon-to-be-enforceable age-verification laws in this new batch of states that allegedly put users at “substantial risk” of identity theft, phishing, and other harms.

Age-verification laws requiring adult site visitors to submit “private information many times to adult sites all over the Internet” normalizes the unnecessary disclosure of personally identifiable information (PII), Pornhub argued, warning, “this is not a privacy-by-design approach.”

Pornhub does not outright oppose age verification but advocates for laws that require device-based age verification, which allows users to access adult sites after authenticating their identity on their devices. That’s “the best and most effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike,” Pornhub argued, because the age-verification technology is proven and less PII would be shared.

“Users would only get verified once, through their operating system, not on each age-restricted site,” Pornhub’s blog said, claiming that “this dramatically reduces privacy risks and creates a very simple process for regulators to enforce.”

A spokesperson for Pornhub-owner Aylo told Ars that “unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.”

“Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy,” Aylo’s spokesperson told Ars. “Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.

Age-verification laws are harmful, Pornhub says

Pornhub’s big complaint with current age-verification laws is that these laws are hard to enforce and seem to make it riskier than ever to visit an adult site.

“Since age verification software requires users to hand over extremely sensitive information, it opens the door for the risk of data breaches,” Pornhub’s blog said. “Whether or not your intentions are good, governments have historically struggled to secure this data. It also creates an opportunity for criminals to exploit and extort people through phishing attempts or fake [age verification] processes, an unfortunate and all too common practice.”

Over the past few years, the risk of identity theft or stolen PII on both widely used and smaller niche adult sites has been well-documented.

Hundreds of millions of people were impacted by major leaks exposing PII shared with popular adult sites like Adult Friend Finder and Brazzers in 2016, while likely tens of thousands of users were targeted on eight poorly secured adult sites in 2018. Niche and free sites have also been vulnerable to attacks, including millions collectively exposed through breaches of fetish porn site Luscious in 2019 and MyFreeCams in 2021.

And those are just the big breaches that make headlines. In 2019, Kaspersky Lab reported that malware targeting online porn account credentials more than doubled in 2018, and researchers analyzing 22,484 pornography websites estimated that 93 percent were leaking user data to a third party.

That’s why Pornhub argues that, as states have passed age-verification laws requiring ID, they’ve “introduced harm” by redirecting visitors to adult sites that have fewer privacy protections and worse security, allegedly exposing users to more threats.

As an example, Pornhub reported, traffic to Pornhub in Louisiana “dropped by approximately 80 percent” after their age-verification law passed. That allegedly showed not just how few users were willing to show an ID to access their popular platform, but also how “very easily” users could simply move to “pirate, illegal, or other non-compliant sites that don’t ask visitors to verify their age.”

Pornhub has continued to argue that states passing laws like Louisiana’s cannot effectively enforce the laws and are simply shifting users to make riskier choices when accessing porn.

“The Louisiana law and other copycat state-level laws have no regulator, only civil liability, which results in a flawed enforcement regime, effectively making it an option for platform operators to comply,” Pornhub’s blog said. As one of the world’s most popular adult platforms, Pornhub would surely be targeted for enforcement if found to be non-compliant, while smaller adult sites perhaps plagued by security risks and disincentivized to check IDs would go unregulated, the thinking goes.

Aylo’s spokesperson shared 2023 Similarweb data with Ars, showing that sites complying with age-verification laws in Virginia, including Pornhub and xHamster, lost substantial traffic while seven non-compliant sites saw a sharp uptick in traffic. Similar trends were observed in Google trends data in Utah and Mississippi, while market shares were seemingly largely maintained in California, a state not yet checking IDs to access adult sites.

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Mixup of drinking and irrigation water sparks dangerous outbreak in children

CDC, children, E. coli, hemolytic uremic syndrome, irrigation water, outbreak, Science, Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7, Utah / /

fearsome faucets —

Of 13 children sickened, 7 hospitalized and 2 had life-threatening complications.

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A child cools off under a water sprinkler.

Enlarge / A child cools off under a water sprinkler.

In 1989, a city in Utah upgraded its drinking water system, putting in a whole new system and repurposing the old one to supply cheap untreated water for irrigating lawns and putting out fires. That meant that the treated water suitable for drinking flowed from new spigots, while untreated water gushed from the old ones. Decades went by with no apparent confusion; residents seemed clear on the two different water sources. But, according to an investigation report published recently by state and county health officials, that local knowledge got diluted as new residents moved into the area. And last summer, the confusion over the conduits led to an outbreak of life-threatening illnesses among children.

In July and August of 2023, state and local health officials identified 13 children infected with Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7. The children ranged in age from 1 to 15, with a median age of 4. Children are generally at high risk of severe infections with this pathogen, along with older people and those with compromised immune systems. Of the 13 infected children, seven were hospitalized and two developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a life-threatening complication that can lead to kidney failure.

Preliminary genetic analyses of STEC O157:H7 from two of the children suggested that the children’s infections were linked to a common source. So, health officials quickly developed a questionnaire to narrow down the potential source. It soon became clear that the irrigation water—aka untreated, pressurized, municipal irrigation water (UPMIW)—was a commonality among the children. Twelve of 13 infected children reported exposure to it in some form: Two said they drank it; five played with UPMIW hoses; three used the water for inflatable water toys; two used it for a water table; and one ran through sprinklers. None reported eating fruits or vegetables from home (noncommercial) gardens irrigated with the UPMIW.

The report on the investigation, published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, did not name the city in Utah. But press releases from a county health department identified the affected city as Lehi, about 30 minutes south of Salt Lake City.

Further genetic testing of STEC O157:H7 isolates linked all of the children’s infections together, as well as to water from five of nine UPMIW exposure sites and samples from the reservoir where the irrigation water is sourced. Microbial source tracking indicated that the contamination could have come from the feces of birds or ruminants.

The county health department and the city put out press releases and informational mailers. They warned residents about the risks of UPMIW, telling them not to drink it or let children play in it. “Do not use irrigation water for bounce houses, pools, slip-n-slides, or any other recreational activities. It is common for children to swallow or get water in their mouths while playing.”

The notices also said that the CDC recommended against watering lawns with the water, though the county advised residents to merely “use caution” when allowing children to play on grass irrigated with UPMIW. “Keep an eye on them,” the advisers warned, and try to prevent them from putting their hands or anything from the lawn in their mouths. “E. coli is hardy and can stick.”

This is not the first time that irrigation water has been linked to outbreaks. In 2010 and 2015, two other Utah cities reported campylobacteriosis outbreaks linked to cross-connections between UPMIW and drinking water lines.

The researchers say such outbreaks can be avoided by efforts to prevent contamination in irrigation water, such as treating water, cleaning reservoirs, and covering them. And, of course, clearly labeling irrigation water and keeping residents informed about its dangers are key to preventing infections.

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Varda’s drug-cooking Winnebago will be remembered as a space pioneer

Commercial space, Features, hypersonic, Science, Space, Utah, Varda / /
Varda's reentry capsule soon after landing at the Utah Test and Training Range.

Enlarge / Varda’s reentry capsule soon after landing at the Utah Test and Training Range.

Varda Space Industries is finally able to celebrate. For nearly eight months, the in-space manufacturing company’s first mission was essentially stranded in low-Earth orbit, but not because of any technical malfunction or a restriction imposed by the laws of physics.

Instead, the spacecraft couldn’t return to Earth until Varda and three government entities—the US military, the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, and the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization—all got on the same page. This was far more complicated than anyone envisioned, and Varda had to bypass landing opportunities in July and September because it couldn’t secure governmental approvals.

Finally, earlier this month, the FAA approved a commercial reentry license for Varda’s space capsule, which was somewhat larger than a mini-fridge, to fall back into the atmosphere and parachute to a landing in the remote Utah desert southwest of Salt Lake City. Varda’s landing zone was at the Utah Test and Training Range, a sprawling military facility primarily used for weapons testing.

Varda’s capsule landed in the Utah desert at around 4: 40 pm EST (2140 UTC) last Wednesday. Approaching from the north, the craft’s heat shield protected it from scorching temperatures during reentry. Then, the capsule deployed a 6.2-foot-diameter (2.1-meter) parachute to slow its velocity for a relatively gentle landing.

A recovery team went out to retrieve the nearly 200-pound capsule and connect it to a helicopter line for a short flight to a nearby processing facility, where engineers would prepare the spacecraft for transport back to Varda’s headquarters in El Segundo, California.

The mood at Varda following the successful landing was “as cheerful as it gets,” said Delian Asparouhov, who co-founded the company in 2020 with former SpaceX engineer Will Bruey and scientist Daniel Marshall.

“I always felt confidence in our team’s ability to accomplish this,” Asparouhov told Ars. “It was just a question of time.”

Waiting game

Varda achieved several firsts with this mission. The Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) has some experience in supporting spacecraft landings, but this was the first time a commercial spacecraft landed at a military test range, adding another layer of regulatory and bureaucratic oversight. In September, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission deposited a cache of asteroid samples at UTTR.

Varda was the first company to secure a commercial FAA reentry license under streamlined commercial spaceflight regulations known as Part 450. This licensing paradigm is regularly used for commercial launches (there were 117 FAA-licensed launches last year), but this was the first time any company went through this process for a reentry.

Only two companies received commercial FAA reentry licenses before Varda—Lockheed Martin for a single test flight of the Orion spacecraft in 2014 and SpaceX for more than 40 commercial flights of its Dragon crew and cargo spacecraft. Both companies have operated under previous licensing regimes before the FAA introduced the revised Part 450 protocol in 2020.

The FAA’s commercial space office is responsible for licensing commercial launch and reentry operations, with a primary interest in ensuring that these activities don’t endanger the public. But FAA air traffic controllers had to find a time to clear a broad swath of airspace around the trajectory of Varda’s descending space capsule. The FAA’s temporary flight restriction for Varda’s reentry was unusually large, particularly for such a small spacecraft, stretching more than 400 miles (700 kilometers) long and 60 miles (100 kilometers) wide from southern Montana to western Utah.

The timing of Varda’s reentry, along with Varda’s access to the secure military facility, also had to be coordinated with the test range’s busy schedule of military exercises.

Varda’s drug-cooking Winnebago will be remembered as a space pioneer Read More »