Pornhub bans are moving across the pond, with the adult site blocking access in France over the country’s age-verification law. It joins 17 US states where Pornhub and other sites from parent company Aylo are inaccessible without a VPN (more on that later).
Last year, France’s Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority finalized standards for age-verification checks on adult sites. It required porn sites to adopt an independent age-verification system by April 11, 2025, to ensure visitors are over 18. The sites’ home pages must also not display any pornographic content until a user’s age is verified, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).
In a statement, Aylo says it has “attempted to collaborate with the government [for years], by consultation, data sharing, and offering pilot project participation. The results of all of this have been clear – site-based age verification does not work. It does not protect children, and it exposes the data of millions of French people to privacy breaches and hacks.”
Aylo backs device-based age verification, which would put the onus on companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft versus specific porn sites. “The French government refuses to take this simple step and instead [is] focused on futile and entirely symbolic regulatory actions which are unenforceable, do not protect children, and expose your private data,” Aylo says.
As a result “we’ve made the difficult decision to suspend access to our sites (user-uploaded content platforms, including Pornhub, YouPorn, Redtube) in France and instead use our platforms to speak directly to the French people,” Aylo says.
This comes as the European Union opened formal age-verifications investigations into Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos after a preliminary investigation found that the four sites aren’t complying with two elements of the Digital Services Act (DSA). Web users in the UK might soon face a similar ban. Regulator Ofcom recently gave sites until July to implement age checks.
Which US States Are Blocked From Viewing Pornhub?
In the US, Aylo has blocked Pornhub and its other sites in the following states in protest of its age-verification laws:
Alabama
Arkansas
Florida
Idaho
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Mississippi
Montana
Nebraska
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
How Did This Start in the US?
The age-verification battle in the US dates back to 2023 when Louisiana passed an age-verification bill. At the time, Pornhub complied with the law and saw its traffic drop by approximately 80% in the state.
“But we know that people didn’t stop consuming porn overnight because of this new law,” Pornhub says. “They just very easily moved to pirate, illegal, or other non-compliant sites that don’t ask visitors to verify their age.”
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Pornhub argues that it has “robust Trust and Safety measures…to protect both the users viewing content on Pornhub from engaging with potentially dangerous content and provide a safe platform for creators to monetize their content and engage with fans.
“Therefore, these laws have not only failed at protecting minors, but have introduced further harm by displacing traffic to sites with few or zero Trust and Safety measures,” it says.
So, as more states moved to pass age-verification laws, Pornhub opted to block access in those states, starting with Utah in 2023.
If you visit Pornhub in a state where the site is blocked, you’re met with a message that argues the state’s law is “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous,” like this one shared by CBS Austin political reporter Michael Adkison after the Texas block went into effect.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
What Do These State Laws Do?
In Alabama, access to Pornhub was blocked ahead of an age-verification law that went into effect on Oct. 1, 2024, AL.com reports. Under HB164, adult sites must use “reasonable age verification methods” to confirm that people are over the age of 18 and display warnings about porn being “potentially biologically addictive” and harmful to “human brain development.”
In Florida, HB 3 requires adult sites to verify that visitors are 18 “using either an anonymous or standard age verification method.” Anonymous ones “must be conducted by a nongovernmental, independent third party.” Florida’s attorney general can collect civil penalties of up to $50,000 per violation, reasonable attorney fees, and court costs, while minors can also pursue up to $10,000 in damages.
In Indiana, SB17 went into effect on June 27, 2024, and requires sites that offer adult content to “use a reasonable age verification method to prevent a minor from accessing an adult-oriented website.” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita says, “Children shouldn’t be able to easily access explicit material that can cause them harm. It’s common sense. We need to protect and shield them from the psychological and emotional consequences associated with viewing porn. We look forward to upholding our constitutional duty to defend this law in court.”
In Kentucky, House Bill 278 applies to sites where more than one-third of its content would be considered harmful to minors.
In Montana, SB 544 requires sites to verify age by having people provide “a digitized identification card” or access a “commercial age verification system” that checks a government ID or uses some other sort of “commercially reasonable method” to verify someone’s age.
In North Carolina, House Bill 8 was part of a larger education bill that also covered things like adding a computer science requirement for high school graduation. But it also imposed the age-verification check for adult sites. It requires sites to use “a commercially available database that is regularly used by businesses or governmental entities for the purpose of age and identity verification or…another commercially reasonable method.” Sites that fail to comply could face civil action from the parents of kids who viewed pornography or anyone whose data is unlawfully retained. In signing the bill in 2023, former Gov. Roy Cooper said those age checks are “important…to help protect children from online pornography.”
In Tennessee, the Protect Tennessee Minors Act requires sites to verify IDs once an hour via uploaded IDs and retain seven years of anonymized data on users who access the site, The Tennessean reports. (South Carolina’s Child Online Safety Act (H. 3424) has similar requirements.)
In Texas, HB 1181 requires adult sites to verify that visitors are of age. It was set to go into effect in September 2023, but Pornhub sued and secured an early victory. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed and got a temporary reprieve in March 2024, allowing the state to enforce HB 1181.
Governors in other states, like Arizona and Wyoming, recently approved age-verification laws. The Arizona bill goes into effect 90 days after the legislature adjourns, so expect that in late August. The Wyoming bill goes into effect on July 1, 2025.
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In North Dakota, lawmakers are considering a bill that would require age verification on a device level, which the Free Speech Coalition calls a “common-sense solution.”
Taking It to the Courts
The Free Speech Coalition and a group of adult platforms, including Aylo, have sued over laws in Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.
The Texas case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, was heard by the US Supreme Court in January 2025, but the court has not issued a final ruling. As a result, the coalition’s cases in Florida, Indiana, and Louisiana are currently on hold until the Supreme Court weighs in. The Utah case was dismissed last year.
These laws “have effectively become state censorship, creating a massive chilling effect for those who speak about, or engage with, issues of sex or sexuality,” the Free Speech Coalition says.
How to Access Pornhub in States Where It’s Blocked
The Pornhub website as it appears in Utah. (Credit: Pornhub)
When Pornhub was blocked in Utah, we turned to VPN services and connected to servers in Virginia and Utah. Upon navigating to Pornhub, we were greeted by the blockade message.
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If you’re affected by the ban, use the VPN app of your choice to connect to a server not in a location currently blocked by Pornhub. (Note that while this guidance can be used to get around Pornhub’s embargo, it could also be used to avoid the very age-restriction requirements Pornhub is protesting. We can’t advise you on the risks of trying to circumvent the law.)
When you switch on a VPN, your web traffic is routed through an encrypted connection to a server operated by the VPN company. That server could be in a different state or a different country from you. Because your web traffic exits that server, it appears as if you are browsing the web from wherever the server is.
So, if you’re in Utah, you should connect to a VPN server that’s not located in Utah, and then navigate to Pornhub as usual. We recommend that you also use incognito mode while streaming pornography to prevent the URLs from showing up in your browser’s history and autocomplete options.
If you don’t already have a VPN service installed, you can find one that will suit you in our roundup of the best VPNs for Pornhub.
Which VPN Should You Use?
Nearly all VPN services will let you specify the country where you want your traffic to appear. Some will let you pick down to the city level. A few let you see a list of the actual servers themselves, and their locations, and make your choice that way.
US-based Pornhub viewers will probably want to use a VPN server that’s located in the US. We recommend a VPN that will at least let you choose servers in a specific US state. Do note that latency will increase and browsing speed decrease when using a VPN, and that the impact will be more noticeable the further away the VPN server is from you.
PCMag’s top-rated VPN Editors’ Choice winner, Proton VPN, shows the cities and specific servers available to customers. It also offers an excellent free VPN, but your server choice will be far more limited—there are servers in the US, but you can’t specify which to use. Fortunately, the free version has no time or data limit.
Other Editors’ Choice-winning VPNs that let you select cities include IVPN, Mullvad VPN, NordVPN, and TunnelBear VPN. Note that IVPN and Mullvad VPN use a privacy-protecting account number system that requires very little personal information, and both will accept cash sent to their respective HQs for a nearly anonymous experience.
How to Watch Porn Online SafelyMax Eddy contributed to this story.
About Chloe Albanesius
Executive Editor for News
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