Florida's New Porn Ban Spurs Surge in VPN Searches

The new ban on porn sites in Florida has led to a significant jump in searches for VPNs from the state’s residents.

While the law that went into effect on January 1 doesn’t block access to adult-oriented websites such as Pornhub, it does require people to submit a driver’s license or other form of ID to verify their age before viewing sexual content. Because of this, many major porn sites are blocking traffic from states that have implemented such rules, and Florida is one of 17 in total where these restrictions now apply.

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According to Google Trends data, searches for “free VPN” in Florida have reached an all-time high, particularly on January 1st. The term scored a perfect 100 on Google’s 0-100 scale, indicating “peak popularity” relative to other points in the same day.

In addition to “vpn” and “free vpn,” Floridians were Googling other related terms, such as “internet pornography” and, for some reason, “computer virus.”

As we’ve written before, VPNs can be used to circumvent geographic restrictions. When you connect to a VPN server in another state, websites see that server’s IP address instead of your own, and so it appears as if you’re browsing from outside of Florida.

The law in Florida (and other states) was unsurprisingly met with opposition from privacy advocates and industry groups, including the Internet Association. In a statement, IA president and CEO Sean Perryman said that the age verification requirement “puts user privacy and security at risk.”

Pornhub, among others, has voluntarily blocked itself in most states with these rules, but there’s still a large number of less-known adult sites accessible via VPN.

But while VPNs can thwart age verification requirements, it’s not clear how well they’re doing to convince people to use them. Pornhub says that its traffic from Florida dropped 80% after the law took effect, but the company adds that its data “indicates” that many Floridians are simply migrating to other sites, not just using VPNs.

In any case, the porn ban will almost certainly be challenged in court, and it’s possible that the Biden administration could take legal action, too. The Justice Department has successfully sued states to block restrictive voting laws.

In other words, the days of easily watching adult content in the US without submitting a scan of your driver’s license could be a thing of the past sooner rather than later.