LOS ANGELES — BangBros has reportedly acquired PornWikiLeaks.com and incinerated what it claims are the hard drives containing all the website’s data.
PornWikiLeaks surfaced in 2010-11 publishing performer data that included real names and other personal details. The site reportedly built its database from a security breach at Adult Industry Medical, the talent testing facility that preceded Free Speech Coalition's current PASS system.
The following message greeted visitors at the PornWikiLeaks website today. It has been slightly edited for clarity:
To our fellow industry peers,
In the current world we live in, as we all know, once it’s on the internet, it’s forever. For too long, this site has unfortunately been a resource for hate, lies and sensitive information. Many of us have had our real names online for the world to see. Over 15,000 performers' real names were listed here. Some had phone numbers, addresses, even family members' names posted as well. That type of information wasn’t voluntarily submitted. It was stolen from anyone that had it posted.
Bang Bros had enough. We have purchased this site with the intention of shutting it down and removing all information associated with it. 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. While shutting this site down doesn’t purge the internet of all possible ties to real names and whatnot, it does make it one less place to harbor and find these things easily. A forum that had 300,000 posts on it, most of them negative and hate-filled, has now disappeared.
If you had anything ever posted on here, it will be removed and deleted forever from here. Bang Bros now owns the domain. Nothing will ever be up here besides this page. So you don’t have to worry about it coming back either.
This industry has weathered a lot and at the end of the day we rely on each other more than we think. Sure, we all have competitors; Bang Bros has plenty in itself. But making enemies doesn’t make us a stronger company. Treating others well and innovating does. So, our innovation this week, while not groundbreaking, hopes to make the internet a little bit better for all of us involved.
A video purporting to show the burning of the PornWikiLeaks data was posted on YouTube.
