A joint research study published by University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft has now shed the light on tracking users by Facebook and Google

This paper explores tracking and privacy risks on pornography websites. Our analysis of 22,484 pornography websites indicated that 93% leak user data to a third party. Tracking on these sites is highly concentrated by a handful of major companies, which we identify. We successfully extracted privacy policies for 3,856 sites, 17% of the total. The policies were written such that one might need a two-year college education to understand them. Our content analysis of the sample’s domains indicated 44.97% of them expose or suggest a specific gender/sexual identity or interest likely to be linked to the user. We identify three core implications of the quantitative results: 1) the unique/elevated risks of porn data leakage versus other types of data, 2) the particular risks/impact for vulnerable populations, and 3) the complications of providing consent for porn site users and the need for affirmative consent in these online sexual interactions.

The nature of this latest social media exposure goes further, into the darkest recesses of the internet, because “analysis of 22,484 pornography websites,” the researchers say in their report, “indicated that 93% leak user data to a third party.” the researchers found that Google and its ecosystem was tracking almost 75% of the porn sites, Oracle almost 25% and Facebook a still eye-watering 10%.

Let’s remember the sheer scale of traffic and usage here. Market-leader Pornhub claimed nearly 30 billion visits in 2017, with 50,000 searches per second. By some reckonings, porn-related traffic now accounts for almost one-third of all traffic, “more than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined,” and “YouPorn uses six times more bandwidth than Hulu.”

And the nature of the data exposed could not be more private to the individuals concerned. Read the full report here https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.06520.pdf