Earlier this year, a website called Porn Wikileaks posted a list of what it claimed were the real names of more than 15,000 current and former porn performers, alongside their stage names, birth dates and other private information. Not only did this new site get the entire adult film industry enraged by freely providing this information, but the way Porn Wikileaks obtained said information is even more irritating.
As Gawker reported, Porn Wikileaks obtained the information from a patient database belonging to to the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM), which conducts the majority of STD tests for the porn industry.
The information published by Porn Wikileaks was first uploaded several weeks ago but only began being widely disseminated on March 31, after its existence was highlighted by Mike South, a blogger who covers adult entertainment issues. “Your information is now in the hands of people who shouldn’t have it,” he warned his readers in the trade.
Most entries posted to Porn WikiLeaks feature only an actor’s name, date of birth and stage name — basic, but some entries go much further. The page on Monica Foster, for example, features detailed information on her family members, including their employers, home addresses, and photos of their homes taken from Google Streetview.
No one knows what motivated the creator of Porn Wikileaks. The site is registered in the Netherlands, apparently by a disgruntled member of the “porn press”, and clearly thinks of itself as a natural extension of its namesake. Its mission statement is lifted directly from the original Wikileaks site, and everyone within the organization seems genuinely convinced that they’re fighting the good fight.
