If you live in the UK, you probably won’t be able to visit Pornhub anymore

Aylo, the parent company of some of the most popular tube sites like Pornhub, announced on Tuesday that it will restrict access to its platforms in the UK, effective February 2.

Since last year, Pornhub and other Aylo sites have complied with the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA), which – among other provisions – mandates that websites containing pornographic content verify the ages of visitors before displaying content that is inappropriate for minors.

Instead of verifying the ages of its users, Aylo will completely block access to platforms like Pornhub in the UK; However, users in the UK who have already verified their identity will still be able to use their accounts.

“Despite the law’s clear intent to restrict minors’ access to adult content and its commitment to enforcement, 6 months into implementation, our experience strongly suggests that the OSA has failed to achieve this goal,” Aiello said in a statement. “We believe that in practice this framework has diverted traffic to darker, unregulated corners of the Internet, and has also put the privacy and personal data of UK citizens at risk.”

Ofcom, the UK regulator that enforces the OSA, disagrees with Aiello’s characterization of the legislation.

“Pornographic services have a choice between using age verification to protect users as required by law, or to block access to their sites in the UK,” Ofcom said in a statement to TechCrunch. “There is nothing stopping technology providers from developing solutions that work at the hardware level, and we urge the industry to go further if they can demonstrate that they are highly effective.”

Age verification technology has proven controversial as it spreads around the world. While children’s online safety is a pressing concern, privacy advocates argue that the type of cloud-based age verification methods mandated by legislation like the OSA harm adults by collecting large amounts of highly sensitive data.

“In other jurisdictions, Aylo was often one of the only major platforms in compliance, only to see traffic diverted to larger, non-compliant sites,” the company said. Sites that do not comply with the OSA are supposed to be fined, but Aylo claims that so far, only the 4chan forum has been fined.

Ofcom also disagrees with Aylo’s claim that it does not penalize porn sites for non-compliance.

Ofcom said: “We took strong and swift action against non-compliance, opening investigations into more than 80 porn sites and imposing a £1 million fine on the porn provider, with more to come.”

The decision to block access in the UK is consistent with Aylo’s decisions on dealing with compliance with age verification laws in the US. Aylo’s websites are blocked in a number of US states where they require age verification for adult content, as the company believes the age verification program opens the door to the threat of a data breach.

These fears are not unfounded. Pornhub was, in fact, vulnerable to a data breach at web and mobile analytics provider Mixpanel, which exposed data about some Pornhub Premium subscribers. This stolen data reportedly included information such as users’ email addresses, location, videos watched, keywords associated with the video, and the dates and times they used the site.