Data collected by Alexa, a subsidiary of Amazon.com that tracks Web traffic around the world, revealed that pornographic sites were among the most visited Internet destinations in Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon.
Five porn sites in Egypt and Lebanon, and seven in Tunisia, broke the list of the top 100 most visited sites in each country, according to Al Arabiya. Two pornographic sites ranked in the top 25 most visited in Egypt.
Pornography is forbidden in much of the Islamic world, and Egypt banned online porn last week. Yet some critics said that people will find ways to get their porn fix regardless of government prohibitions.
"Nothing could stop Prohibition [in the U.S.], so there is no way that they are ever going to be able to do anything that will stop access to the Internet, and along with that access comes adult entertainment," Steven Hirsch, founder of Vivid Entertainment, a leading U.S. pornographic film production company, told Martin Bashir in 2011, according to MSNBC. "Maybe they can stop it for a period of time, but long-term I just don't see any way."
Computers seized in the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan were found to contain a "considerable quantity" of pornographic videos, according to The New York Times. The Islamic militant had long denounced the West for its lax sexual mores.
The Alexa numbers are consistent with results from Western countries. A review of Alexa data by The Huffington Post counted at least six porn sites among the top 100 most visited in the United States and Canada, and five in the United Kingdom.
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