On April 4, both Pornhub and its sister site, YouPorn, will switch to HTTPS by default, a month after popular adult site RedTube made the transition
Brian Barrett / Wired :
Context & Ripple Effects
Aylo's three flagship properties are converging on encrypted delivery one site at a time: RedTube flipped to HTTPS by default a month ago, and Pornhub and YouPorn complete the set on April 4. The move lands years before the compliance era reshaped these same brands — long before Aylo agreed to add government-approved age assurance in the UK under the Online Safety Act.
First-order effects
- Visitors to Pornhub and YouPorn get encrypted sessions by default, hiding individual page views from anyone on the network path between user and site.
- With RedTube already converted, all three of the group's major tube sites now ship the same security baseline as of April 4.
Second-order effects
- Rival adult sites face an encrypted-by-default expectation from users, making plain HTTP look negligent rather than merely outdated.
- Encryption becomes assumed plumbing just as regulators turn to these platforms — the UK age-check fight and Italy's verification law both presuppose sites capable of running verified, per-user flows over secure connections.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the adult industry consolidates around operators who treat security and compliance as platform features — the same infrastructure posture that later defined Aylo's response to age-verification mandates in the UK and Italy.
The trend: Adult platforms are adopting mainstream web-security baselines on their own schedule, a groundwork move that precedes and enables the regulatory compliance wave now hitting the sector.