Reminds me of a 1990s scam, can't remember if I saw that in a movie or if it did really happen. Some dodgy magazine advertisement for porn videos or something. Customers orders, write a check to a totally innocuous company name. Then the company claims they ran out of stock and issue a refund check, with a "porn xxx sexshop" company name, and of course no customer wants to present that check to their bank or having that name appearing on their bank statement.

This is a line in "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels" (Guy Ritchie film)! Was this a scam in the real world as well??

I think that's where I must have heard it then. Though I am sure it must be inspired from a real scam, like most books/scenarios.

The scheme is found at an earlier date in a novel by Jerzy Kosinski. I believe it's in his book called "Steps" (1968), however I forget exactly which work it's in.

The scam seems to be well known. I presume it happened sometime.

Also included in the movie Snatch. Big black dildos were used...

Funnily enough I was talking to the cashier at a sex shop the other day about what it shows up as on my bank statements. I personally don't care, but was curious.

Turns out it just shows up as the name of the shop, they don't bother to try and hide it these days. Pretty sure strip clubs still show up with innocuous names though, but it's been over half a decade since I've been inside one.

Prenda Law had a similar scam going here in the US, but used BitTorrent instead of RedTube.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law

The difference is that bittorrent is uploading content. People are getting sued left and right for Bittorrent cases in germany but for streaming, that was a new one.

I can't imagine visiting port sites without using at least a VPN. And without using an ~anonymous persona, and ~anonymous payment methods. And full-disk encryption. And as I recall, I never did.

But people obviously do. And get nailed by stuff like RedTubeGate, and the Ashley Madison leak. It's mind-boggling.

Edit: OK, so I get the "I love my porn, and you closed-minded idiots can just sod off". That's easy to say, when you live somewhere that porn is legal and ~accepted. But many who read HN aren't in such places. And they may not realize just how much they're not in such places. Until the come to a prosecutor's attention, and they're screwed.

I watch porn. Like everybody else on the planet.

Why hide something so mundane? It’s like pretending you don’t poop. We all know you poop. You’re human.

Reminds me of a failed study I read about. Researchers wanted to look into the effects of porn and couldn’t find a big enough control group. There simply aren’t enough people who don’t watch porn to make the study viable.

PS: in terms of malware it’s religious sites you gotta worry about. https://www.pcworld.com/article/254694/religious_sites_carry...

I bet you close the bathroom or stall door when you poop though.

They're both something many/most people don't like to advertise. Maybe they'd be even less happy to have details of either habit known. You might think that's silly, but it's far from unusual, it's the norm.

your analogy is off. and the suggestion to use VPN is outright counterproductive.

people close the bathroom door when they poop. I guess they also close the door when they whatch porn.

using a vpn is akin to (car analogy time) trying to using a rental car while in public. you actually expose yourself to the rental company, who might be shadier than the people at the place you're showing up at, who can still see you trhu the window (analogy for your 3rd party cookies)

“might be shadier” is a big part of it... many vpn services are fairly well vetted and it’s known they don’t maintain traffic logs, in addition to staking their whole business reputation on a malicious lie if even a whiff became public, with lots of media & security scrutiny

Just like with many car rebtal companies.. very trustworthy and staking their reuptation on not renting you a car that breaks down, etc.

even if thats is true, and let's assume it is, you are adding yet another bunch of ISP, networks, nation states laws into the original mix. That might not work out in your favour.

not to mention people. no matter how reputable the car renter is, it is still hiring a minimum wage clerk who will handle all your documents and credit card.

my little research suggests the opposite

This doesn’t make sense to me at all. Can you clarify what point this is intended to make?

you do not trust layer X. so you add layer A, B, C, Y and Z. none have more merits to be more trustworthy than X. You are downgrading your total network trust by adding vpns you do not control fully.

> I bet you close the bathroom or stall door when you poop though.

Many public restrooms in the U.S. barely have a door, and if they do it is so high off the ground and so short it barely offers any privacy at all

And in restrooms like that, I rarely poop. Only if necessary.

I'm pretty sure the lack of privacy in US public restrooms stems from illicit use and loss prevention. Not a cultural norm of acceptance of pooping.

Why not? Are you so ashamed your your body? The worst thing I can imagine is something involving cameras. But that would be probably prosecutable.

I hope that some day the US will join the civilised world in banning that atrocity.

Yeah but I still bring my personal tracking device to the bathroom. How else am I supposed to read memes?

Which brings us to an interesting point. We all want immediate privacy right? Close the door when watching porn, make sure your webcam isn't turned on, close the bathroom when pooping etc.

But having a VPN when watching porn or banning phones from the restroom, that's not something many (most?) people do. How come? What's the difference?

The main difference between those things is that one is easy to understand and the other is not.

Also vpn typically costs money

If you don't want to use P2P or multiple hops ("Secure Core"), then ProtonVPN offers some free VPNs.

I use ProtonVPN free nested with another free VPN, then I put Tor on top. You just have to know what you are doing.

This is actually cultural too. Stalls in China don't have doors.. nor toilets for that matter.

Well,in some villages/towns probably yes. In bigger cities, stalls have doors generally. I don't think people wanna be seen while they are sitting..

> I bet you close the bathroom or stall door when you poop though.

I do, but not because I'm shy someone might see (a glimpse) of me being naked; I do it so that they don't attempt to enter a toilet already in use. I find myself often not closing the toilet in after hours. In fact, I don't close the toilet at home cause I know the people who can enter won't. Except when I poo, I might, because I don't want them to smell it.

Yep hard to believe now but it never used to be a taboo subject.

Office wanking used to be an everyday, normal part of the working week. It was the big change in the 1990s after they banned office smoking.

As recorded by this fly on the wall documentary series from the UK, “Big Train”:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VKH9ECC_Qa4

Huh? Really, "office wanking"? I don't recall anywhere that was OK. Although I won't claim that I never did it. Or office (in my case, lab) sex, either. But always at night, when very few were working.

Everyone has something to hide... and do you really want your fetishes and sexual interests tracked and profiled? That random BDSM video you viewed, etc

...it wasn't random and I'm out and proud. Some people are not ashamed of their sexual desires. I do understand some people are, and they are concerned about tracking.

If you were given access to a list of all the porn content you've viewed along with the associated metadata neatly categorized and documented it might change your outlook on the issue. It's not just about the subject matter, it's about what conclusions can be correctly or incorrectly drawn from the data. Metadata such as date and time, location, etc. would be of interest. All this being said, "I'm a sick fuck, I like a quick fuck"

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/pornhub-views-spiked-...

I'm not necessarily ashamed about anything. Although I am disturbed at how hot I get about some seriously evil stuff. But at least not by abusive child porn, which only saddens and angers me. Even the child model bullshit. There's lots of that on Freenet.

And yes, I am perhaps too curious.

However, I definitely wouldn't want anything beyond mainstream porn linked to my meatspace identity. Because I don't want to risk rotting in prison for ~five years, and getting permanent probation. But by using VPNs and Tor, I need not be overly constrained by those risks.

What if those desires happen to be illegal in your country of residence? In some locales plain homosexuality can get you in trouble.

It depends where you are, and what sort of porn you watch. In some places, any porn could mean prison or worse. In more places, it could mean losing a job, divorce, etc.

There are a lot of intolerant people of all kinds around. I can't blame people for being low-key about it. Arguably being open helps change that, but the more fringe content is going to take time to be accepted.

and yet everyone pretends the opposite

I've never visited a p..n site with a VPN.

I can't imagine visiting any site without a VPN.

I mean, I can, but it does make me feel naked, nowadays.

Who do I want knowing my visit to example.com:

(1) my local sysadmin + my ISP + example.com

(2) my VPN + their ISP

Migration of leaked info to fewer and farther parties wins every time.

depending on which VPN provider you chose, (1) could be far safer. at least your local sysadmin and ISP have A) a direct work/business relationship with you that they'd likely rather not harm, and B) possibly some laws governing what they do with your personal information & which sites you visit.

A similar scam just got slapped down by a UKjudge:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/30/virgin_slaps_golden...

wow now thats a hustle LOL