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Your Secret Porn Habits Could Easily Be Revealed To The Entire World

By Holly Pyne

19 October 2015

Incognito mode.

Ctrl + H, 'Clear browsing data'.

Two age-old browsing steps that won't save you from the next great privacy hack.

Software engineer and Harvard graduate Brett Thomas has speculated that your most intimate viewing habits could soon be exposed for all the world to see: "If you are watching/viewing porn online in 2015, even in Incognito mode, you should expect that at some point your porn viewing history will be publicly released and attached to your name."

BUT HOW?, comes the cry of much of the internet.

"If a malicious party obtained identifiable access logs for just one of the websites that know your name, and view logs for just one of the adult websites you’ve visited, it could infer with very high probability - beyond plausible deniability - a list of porn you've viewed," explains Thomas.

"At any time, somebody could post a website that allows you to search anybody by email or Facebook username and view their porn browsing history. All that's needed are two nominal data breaches and an enterprising teenager that wants to create havoc."

There are a number of technical markers that a malicious hacker could use to pull up your entire browsing history, says Thomas.

Browser footprints: the tell tale markers left by your computer every time it grabs information from a website - even in incongito mode
Global identifiers: once you've gained the above markers, some hackers would be able to work out every website you've been to
User tracking: "Tracking web users is super valuable, so almost every traditional website that you visit saves enough data to link your user account to your browser fingerprint, either directly or via third parties", says Thomas

With this information to hand, a hacker could hold a great many people to ransom over the searches, website names and even details on the videos and images you've been accessing in your "alone time".

Issues of breach of privacy aside, would you be bothered if the world found out what kind of adult content you'd been browsing? Let us know below...