BEWARE! Your porn browsing habits will be made public: security expert

After you read this headline, you are sure to automatically rise a few inches from your chair. And if you did, it clearly means that you have been searching for online porn in the recent past.

Well, if you did, then you should be aware that there are very high chances about all your porn habits and searched keywords will one day be put up on an online listing. What’s worse is that the list will have your real name against it.

A security expert and software engineer Brett Thomas has issued a shocking warning on his blog about online privacy. He mentions that ‘If you are watching/viewing porn online in 2015, even in Incognito mode, you should expect that at some point your porn viewing history will be publicly released and attached to your name.’

He goes on to explain his reason for the warning, stating that all your browsing habit data is usually leaked from your browser itself, even if you are in incognito mode. Each user can be tracked too—almost every website you visit saves enough of data to link your account to your browser’s fingerprints. This is either directly or indirectly using third party options. Lastly, he also notifies us that there are many data breaches happening online. With PornHub and YouPorn being recent victims of data theft, there are other similar low and high-profile websites that are fallen prey to hackers. XHamster was also one of the most popular websites to be hacked and sensitive data was stolen. And don’t forget the online dating website ‘Ashley Madison’ which had one of the worst consequences.

Most hackers get their data from malware-affected advertisements, downloading websites and similar such methods.

How does it happen?

‘If a malicious party obtained identifiable access logs for just one of the websites that know your name, and view logs for just one of the adult websites you’ve visited, it could infer with very high probability - beyond plausible deniability - a list of porn you've viewed. At any time, somebody could post a website that allows you to search anybody by email or Facebook username and view their porn browsing history. All that's needed are two nominal data breaches and an enterprising teenager that wants to create havoc’. Remember the ‘Fappening’ that brought Snapchat to its knees?