As you analyze your users’ engagement, you collect sensitive data, including their interests, credit card information, IP addresses, and transactional data.
To protect this data from cyberattacks and third-party sites, you must ensure you have specific systems in place for collecting, handling, sharing, and deleting it. To help you, Adult Site Broker has put together our guide on how porn sites can stay on top of their data protection obligations.
First, a disclaimer: we are not attorneys. We always strongly suggest that you seek advice from a legal professional on these and any other legal matters.
What Is Data Protection?
Rooted in the right to privacy, data protection is defined as the “process of safeguarding data and ensuring it is used fairly and properly. It also involves restoring data if lost, compromised, or corrupted due to human error, cyberattacks, or intentional harm.” It includes the handling of personal data, including addresses, IP addresses, names, contact details, credit card details, and visitors’ interests, and how visitors use your porn site.
Data Protection and Website Tracking
As a porn site, you may find that using website tracking helps you gain insights into your users and build a complete picture of your customers. This is when porn sites collect and analyze a user’s website habits, such as their details, transactional data, or search history. But how does it affect your porn sites’ data protection obligations?
You can conduct website tracking without breaching data protection laws, provided you have safeguards in place for collecting and storing personal data and obtain their full consent to collect it in the first place.
Data Protection and Your Porn Site
Depending on which country you operate in, you may find a few different data protection regulations you need to follow to stay legally compliant. Some of the main ones around the world that may affect your adult site include:
EU
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that sets guidelines for collecting and processing personal information from individuals who live in and outside the European Union (EU). The UK also has the Data Protection Act (2018), which implements the GDPR framework in UK law.
USA
In the USA, depending on which state you are in depends on which data protection legislation you must follow. However, the most common ones you may find your porn site uses are the California Consumer Privacy Act, which requires businesses to give consumers certain information in a “notice at collection.” A notice at collection must list the categories of personal information businesses collect about consumers and the purposes for which they use those categories.
Canda
In Canada, the Digital Charter Implementation Act sets out business obligations regarding the collection, handling, and storage of personal data. The latest update, which took effect in June 2024, gave financial organizations the right to share personal data without notifying the individual, provided the request was reasonable or for the purpose of detecting fraudulent behavior, money laundering, or tax evasion.
Switzerland
The 2023 Federal Act on Data Protection Act in Switzerland offers one of the strictest data protection policies worldwide; it aims to give individuals more rights to information about their data to ensure that it is protected and that mistakes are rectified.
How To Stay On Top Of Your Data Protection Obligations
The country in which your porn site operates may depend on how stringent your data protection obligations are. However, as a site that handles sensitive personal data and the card details of your website visitors, some of the ways you can stay on top of your data protection obligations as a porn site are:
Privacy Policy
In your privacy policy, you should explicitly state what types of data you will collect, how you will handle it, and for how long. You should also allow an option on your website for users to opt into or out of the collection and analysis of their data.
Cookie Consent
You must also have a cookie consent policy for website visitors to either consent to or opt out of the collection of their data. This could be a banner at the bottom of a website page or a pop-up display that appears when they enter the site.
Only Use the Data For What You Said You Would
Once you have collected personal data, you need to ensure you are in line with your data policies. That means you can only use it for what you have said you will, so you should not share the data with third-party sites unless you have explicitly stated that you will.
Multifactor Authentication and Password Protection
As well as collecting data, as a porn site, you must also take the necessary steps to protect your customers’ data. Recently, one of the most popular ways has been installing and using multifactor authentication and password protections on your website, such as needing a code to login.
Firewalls and Antivirus Protection
To protect your users from any potential threats, your website should have a built-in firewall and antivirus running in the background. This helps protect your website from viruses, malware, and other harmful attacks that could access and steal your users’ personal data.
What Happens If You Breach Your Data Protection Obligations?
As technology advances, cybersecurity attacks on personal and credit card data have become increasingly common. And although a cyber attack isn’t your fault, if you are seen to be in breach of your data protection obligations, such as selling or sharing sensitive data to third parties (such as the current legal battle Pornhub are facing), not having a privacy policy on your website or even not having any measures in place to protect your user’s data, then you may find yourself in serious financial or legal consequences.
So, what can happen if you breach your data protection obligations?
Legal
Suppose your porn site is seen breaching data protection laws. In that case, you may face legal consequences, including civil suits against the wronged party or criminal offenses, depending on the severity of the violation. This could result in your site being forced to delete certain types of data and even shut down.
Financial
Depending on the country you are operating in and the data protection legislation you need to follow, you can end up paying fines for each breach of data protection. For instance, in the EU, violating GDPR obligations can result in a fine of up to 4% of your annual turnover.
Reputational
There are also reputational, legal, and financial consequences. Suppose your site gains a reputation for breaching data protection, such as selling its users’ sensitive data. In that case, you may find that, in the long run, you lose traffic and revenue as people no longer wish to pay for your content.
Conclusion
When it comes to understanding your users and offering personalized offerings based on their interests, searches, and even transactions, collecting your customers’ data is a great way to do so. However, before you can start doing this, understanding your data protection obligations as the owner of an adult website can go a long way in saving your porn site’s reputation and avoiding financial and legal consequences.
Depending on your country, you may have different data protection obligations. However, there are specific steps you can take no matter which laws you follow to ensure you comply.
Setting up systems to collect, store, and handle data securely, including firewalls and antivirus software, and obtaining consent from website visitors are crucial for your site to comply with current international data protection standards.
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