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New Delhi: The coronavirus pandemic has driven people into their homes, but some have found a way to beat the boredom with a choice pastime — watching porn, that too desi(Indian).

This despite a government-mandated ban on 857 pornsites. People are using Virtual Private Network service (VPN), Tor browser or mirror sites to access the porn content.

According to data collected by one of the leading adult entertainment sites, xHamster, there has been a nearly 20 per cent spike per day in the number of visitors from India in March as compared to February.

“We’re seeing a daily traffic increase in India of between 10-20 per cent as compared to last month,” vice president of xHamster, Alex Hawkins, told ThePrint Tuesday. “Traffic from India really started increasing for us in early February, but it’s ramped up substantially in the past two weeks.”

Hawkins says xHamster is among the world’s top five adult entertainment sites, and according to its website, has over 30 million unique visitors a day.

Also read: India will see COVID-19 community transmission but these steps can help, says ICMR study

What Indians are watching

According to Hawkins, users from India are watching mostly ‘desi porn’.

“Our most visited category in India is ‘Indian’ — there’s a lot of national pride, it seems. The second-most popular category is ‘Old & Young’,” Hawkins said.

The other popular categories are, ‘Mom’, ‘Japanese’, and ‘Porn for Women’, said Hawkins.

He added that male and female viewers have similar taste in porn. However, “men are more interested in ‘Mom’ than women, and women are more interested in ‘Porn for Women’,” according to Hawkins.

More takers for porn across the world

xHamster is not unique in this phenomenon. Data from some of the most popular porn sites in the world say visitors have risen and traffic from India have risen substantially in the past two weeks. Pornhub, the world’s biggest porn site that was visited over 42 billion times in 2019, has seen a rise in Indian visitors during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown according to a CNBC report citing Pornhub data from 17 March.

While Pornhub saw large traffic spikes from Italy (57 per cent traffic rise compared to an ‘average day’), France (38 per cent rise), and Spain (61 per cent rise) after the company offered free access to paid premium videos in these countries worst affected by the pandemic, India still showed the second highest Pornhub traffic spike of 18 per cent after Hong Kong (23.4 per cent), for a country where Pornhub is blocked and so cannot benefit from free premium content even if it is offered.

Also read: Kashmiri students stuck in Bangladesh won’t be brought back to India

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