To read the copy on the hard drive snooping website Find His Porn (emphasis theirs), you would think that the history of human relationships can be boiled down to a single conflict: On the one side, there are men who secretly spend all their time and money on porn, and women who must use any means at their disposal to ferret out these disgusting acts. If you’re not offended by this, you probably should be.Â
On their site, Find His Porn states its reason for existing thusly:
Long gone are the days when guys would hide their porn stash under their mattress or in their dresser drawers. Porn has gone virtual – which means no more adult DVD’s or dirty magazines that you will find lying around. Everything he looks at is right there on your computer, only problem is it’s not easy to find. Aren’t you curious what he’s up to? You are not alone. Most women are curious and until now there was little that could be done.
Because this is apparently how healthy relationships function, according to Find His Porn’s twisted world view based it seems on trashy romcom plots.
Please note that none of us at Geekosystem has actually patronized Find His Porn, and the site’s copy is distressingly vauge on the details of how it works. Basically, it’s a web-based tool that scours your hard drive for porn, and presents you with a neat little report when it’s done. This is all done remotely without having to download anything, because letting a strange website browse around your computer is an acceptable risk.
The fact that it seems to search and index your hard drive remotely is more than a little troubling, especially since the process is not described anywhere on the site. Whatever they’re doing, they’re not telling their customers. While it’s unclear how the search is executed, I am assuming that it isn’t using expensive photo identification software that can tell the difference between a picture of breasts and a picture of Mickey Mouse’s enormous eyeballs. If the video posted to the site’s front page is demonstrative of the service’s search capabilities, it seems to simply be searching your hard drive for dirty words. Which, if you feel like you can’t trust your partner, you could do for free. And perhaps delete some useless old files you’d forgotten about in the process.
The sketchiness of that concept aside, this site seems just about two steps above a scam. The site claims that the service regularly costs a whopping $49.99, but is $19.95 for a limited time. Strangely, the demo video on the site’s front page shows the same 50% off deal, and was uploaded 10 months ago. To me, this says that the actual cost of the service is $19.95, and that the higher price is completely exaggerated to make you think you’re getting a deal.
Here’s what I find particularly interesting: Find His Porn is a site which paints itself as a tool for ferreting out secret activities. However, it’s not above a little clandestine activities itself. By nature of being “no download,” it leaves no trace on your computer, a point it plays up quite a bit. And on their billing page it says:
Completely anonymous. No trace of use. Ambiguous name on credit card statement (PAYPAL****) .
Now, I have no right to judge how people want to handle their relationships. If people — men or women — are threatened by their significant other looking at pornography, that’s their prerogative. However, I do think it’s shameful for Find His Porn to play into a pattern of dishonesty. Their site not only assumes that people (specifically, men) are hiding their activities from their partners, but that the only way to solve this problem is through secret investigation.
Not talking about it. No, never that. Never communicating openly and honestly and behaving like adults. In fact, that really sums up this website. It assumes that men are too immature to be honest about their behavior and that women are too immature to talk with their partners about their relationship. And that’s insulting, to everyone.
If you find yourself with a burning need to see if the man/woman in your life (the site also says it’s great to spy on the porn habits of “kids”), you could do much better than use this site and their intrusive search. Sitting down and talking with your partner about your concerns is free, and probably much better for your relationship. As is manning/womaning up and chillaxing about your special someone get some cheap thrills online.
Here’s the demo video from the site. Please note that it depicts some brief NSFW imagery and filenames.
Looks like the company pulled their own video. We’ll post it again if it surfaces.
- If you can’t watch porn at home, you can always do it on an airplane
- Speaking of “doing it” on an airplane
- If you’re worried about porn, maybe Anonymous can help
