IIUC, porn is used as an example to highlight that these are very personal details that are being sold, and porn preferences are things people often fear more of leaking than - for example - their financial data.
John Oliver, in his work on the NSA scandal had Snowden explain individual NSA programs based on "dick picks", to help people visualize and clarify the consequences of what otherwise is just generically described as "selling/stealing your data".
Yeah people always assume the buyers of the data are companies like Google, and not some group who wants to blackmail you if you don't give them five Bitcoins.
> porn preferences are things people often fear more of leaking than - for example - their financial data
I remember this being the opposite - for nude pictures instead of porn preferences at least.
Avast did a study where 77% of US respondents said that between nude pictures and financial data they would rather have nude pictures of them leaked[0].
Maybe it's because financial data is directly tied to one's well-being but except for certain professions nude photos aren't.
Then again nude photos aren't necessarily the same as porn.
Why concentrate on intended use? More interesting is what, er, unanticipated value-add might be there.
Could a malicious actor create a blackmail-bot? It wouldn't even need to be that great - just something a little more believable than the "I took over your computer and videoed you masturbating" spam.
Could more subtle, targeted blackmail operation involve this data? There is a lot of this sort of thing in politics.
We know PIs, bail-bonders and other folks on the fuzzy LE/commercial coercion industry line were heavy users of realtime cellphone tracking. I imagine the more creative ones have considered the value of these data pits, too.
John Oliver, in his work on the NSA scandal had Snowden explain individual NSA programs based on "dick picks", to help people visualize and clarify the consequences of what otherwise is just generically described as "selling/stealing your data".