The Adult Industry's Security Problem Isn't About Shame,It's About Systematic Exclusion

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Our moral squeamishness about adult content has built structural vulnerabilities into the internet that criminals exploit every day. While we wag fingers at users whose data was compromised, we ignore the regulatory and financial apartheid that pushed a massive, legitimate business into the security equivalent of a back alley.

This isn’t about defending pornography or making moral judgments about adult content. This is about recognizing that when we systematically exclude entire industries from standard business practices, we don’t make them disappear—we make them weaker, and that weakness ripples through the entire digital ecosystem.

The Infrastructure of Exclusion

PornHub isn’t some fly‑by‑night operation run out of a basement. It’s one of the most visited websites on the planet, with traffic that rivals Netflix. Yet, according to the breach details, their data was compromised through MixPanel, a third‑party analytics service they stopped using in 2021. This dependency on potentially less secure third‑party services isn’t accidental; it’s a direct result of being systematically excluded from mainstream business infrastructure.

• Payment processors routinely refuse to work with adult‑content platforms or impose punitive terms that don’t apply to other industries.
• Cloud providers often have vague “acceptable use” policies that can be weaponized against adult content.
• Banking relationships are harder to establish and maintain.
• Even basic business services like customer analytics, fraud detection, and security monitoring often come with asterisks when adult content is involved.

This forces legitimate adult platforms into a parallel economy of specialized service providers, many of whom lack the resources, expertise, or regulatory oversight of their mainstream counterparts. When you can’t bank with Chase, you end up banking with whoever will take you. When Amazon Web Services shows you the door, you end up with providers who may not have the same security standards. When Visa won’t process your payments, you work with whoever will.

The result is a Balkanized internet where some of the most‑visited websites in the world operate under fundamentally different security constraints than their traffic would normally warrant.

The Criminal Enterprise Advantage

Here’s where the hypocrisy becomes dangerous: while legitimate adult businesses face systematic exclusion from mainstream infrastructure, actual criminal enterprises often face fewer barriers.

• A cryptocurrency exchange that launders money for ransomware gangs can often obtain better banking relationships than a legal adult‑content platform.
• A “wellness” company selling fake supplements can access payment processing that’s denied to sites featuring consensual adult content.
• Social‑media platforms that profit from trafficking and exploitation face fewer financial restrictions than platforms with verified age compliance and performer protections.

This isn’t speculation; it’s observable in the marketplace. Criminal enterprises adapt quickly to financial exclusion because they’re already operating outside the law. They build resilient, distributed infrastructure designed to survive law‑enforcement attention and invest heavily in security because their business model depends on it.

Meanwhile, legitimate adult businesses that want to follow the rules, pay taxes, and operate transparently find themselves systematically disadvantaged in accessing the very infrastructure that would make them more secure. They’re pushed toward the margins not because of criminal behavior, but because of moral disapproval.

The Ripple Effect

The security consequences extend far beyond the adult industry. When major platforms are forced to operate with substandard security infrastructure, they become attractive targets for attackers who can then use compromised systems as launching points for broader campaigns.

The ShinyHunters group that breached PornHub isn’t a specialized adult‑industry attacker; they’re part of the Com collective that has “rampaged across the internet for years, breaching hundreds of companies.” They target adult platforms not because of ideological opposition to pornography, but because those platforms often represent softer targets due to their systematically weakened security posture.

• Every adult‑platform breach provides attackers with credentials, techniques, and infrastructure that can be repurposed against other targets.
• The same social‑engineering tactics used to compromise adult‑content creators work against executives at Fortune 500 companies.
• The same payment‑fraud schemes adapted for adult sites get deployed against e‑commerce platforms.

We’ve created a situation where some of the internet’s most visited destinations are systematically prevented from implementing enterprise‑grade security, then act surprised when they become vectors for broader criminal activity.

The Regulation Paradox

Politicians love to talk tough about both cybersecurity and adult content, but their policy choices actively undermine both goals. Age‑verification laws like those spreading across U.S. states sound reasonable in principle, but they’re implemented in ways that further fragment the security landscape.

Rather than establishing clear, uniform standards that legitimate platforms can meet while accessing mainstream business services, these laws typically impose compliance…