You get that “itch”, and you have some spare time, so you load up your porn site of choice and settle in.

You’re using incognito of course, because you don’t want your browser to know what you’re doing. And yet you suddenly start seeing some very suspicious ads online.

Indiatimes

That’s because incognito mode doesn’t really stop certain websites from tracking the porn you’re watching, according to the authors of a new study. That’s because porn sites employ tracking software from tech companies like Facebook and Google, which can gather data on you even if you’re using your browser’s privacy mode. And these apps then also send that data to third parties.

The researchers analyzed 22,484 porn sites and found that 93 percent of them leak data to third parties, even when accessed through incognito mode. It’s a “unique and elevated risk,” warn the researchers, as 45 percent of porn site URLs also detail the content on the page.

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Basically, Facebook and Google don’t just know when you’re watching porn, they also get an idea of your sexual preferences.

“Everyone is at risk when such data is accessible without users’ consent, and thus can potentially be leveraged against them,” they write in the study. “These risks are heightened for vulnerable populations whose porn usage might be classified as non-normative or contrary to their public life.” 

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For instance, the researchers hypothesize that this data can be used against gay porn watchers for instance, in countries where homosexuality is still illegal. Similarly, it could also be used to blackmail a celebrity about their sexual preference or kinks if they were previously unknown.

It’s still unclear how this data is stored or shared however. If for instance, it’s anonymized, then perhaps there’s no harm to it. It’s still a problem though that this is happening even when you want your porn viewing to be discreet.

For instance, the researchers found trackers made by Google and its subsidiaries on 74 percent of adult sites, but the company has always insisted that any data it gathers from porn sites isn’t used to informs its advertising platform.

“We don’t allow Google Ads on websites with adult content and we prohibit personalized advertising and advertising profiles based on a user’s sexual interests or related activities online,” a Google spokeswoman told The New York Times, which first covered the study. “Additionally, tags for our ad services are never allowed to transmit personally identifiable information.”

Facebook’s trackers meanwhile were found on 10 percent of porn sites, and they issued a similar denial. Their code to track users however can be embedded into any site without their permission.

Oracle was another company with trackers on adult site, 24 percent of them to be exact, but they didn’t issue a comment on the findings.

It’s hard to gauge just how big of an issue this is, mostly because trackers exist all across the web. Some mundane ones like cookies simply remember your login ID on sites to help autofill, while other are to monitor web traffic. A lot of them on the other hand are for firms to serve ads.

The type of data they collect is also varied. Some of it is simply checking what OS, device, or browser you’re using. The problem comes in when this data is attached to an individual profile that collates data on you, known as “fingerprinting”. That’s even worse when these trackers save things like your IP address.

“The fact that the mechanism for adult site tracking is so similar to, say, online retail should be a huge red flag,” Elena Maris, the study’s lead author and a researcher at Microsoft, told The New York Times. “This isn’t picking out a sweater and seeing it follow you across the web. This is so much more specific and deeply personal.”

Even worse, only 17 percent of the thousands of websites they checked had any sort of privacy policy disclosing that data was being collected at all. And even then, they’re mostly full of legal speak to make it incomprehensible.

It’s not just an invasion of privacy, it’s a security risk. If a hacker us able to hack into a porn site’s servers, as has happened in the past, they could potentially get information like usernames, passwords, IP addresses, and even credit card details.

Of course, until governments establish regulations for how this sort of data is collected and shared, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Except maybe stop watching porn?

Hahaha yeah right.