Adult film company BangBros bought out and shut down PornWikiLeaks.com – a notorious website that specialized in mining the personal data of porn actors and publishing it online without consent, Vice reported Thursday.
The website’s front page now displays a statement by BangBros, explaining that personal data on some 15,000 performers was published on this domain.
“That type of information wasn’t voluntarily submitted. It was stolen from anyone that had it posted,” the statement says.
The statement adds that the buyout had no other intention than to remove the personal data from open access. BangBros insists it did not extract personal data from the servers.
“There’s no catch. No hidden thing to getting your personal stuff off of it. We simply didn’t want it out there for the world to see anymore. Yes, it’s that easy,” the statement says.
BangBros says all data, which included some 300,000 forum posts, has been deleted permanently. The front page provides a link to a short video which shows flammable liquid being poured on a pile of PornWikiLeaks hard drives and a fire subsequently set.
Speaking in an interview, former porn star Bree Olson explained that actors in the adult film industry experience numerous difficulties when people learn about their occupation; she shared a story of a financial agent refusing to work with her after learning of her former job, citing “religious beliefs.”
