The emergence of sexy, gorgeous young women doing their kinky little bits on camera has created a whole new type of porn, one that takes advantage of the explosion in high-speed internet, cheap cloud hosting and ubiquitous social media. The stars of this kind of porn are called camgirls. They perform live shows to customers and, in some cases, plan/shoot/edit their own videos which they sell direct to fans – cutting out the middlemen.
It’s a highly lucrative business model for the girls doing it, and they are the perfect product for their customers – horny men who, after a lifetime of flicking through Tinder profiles, Instagram accounts and watching porn, are ready to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to simply receive female attention. They’re the “whale” customer base that camsites rely on, and as such, the girls do everything in their power to maximise their incomes from this adolescent consumer base.
Despite the fact that some of this type of work is legal, it’s not without its risks for both cam models and their customers. For the models, the biggest risk is that their private information will get leaked – which could expose them to stalkers and extortionists. A recent data leak by a webcam network operating adult chatrooms has put many camgirls’ personal details at risk.
According to cybersecurity firm Condition: Black, a server for the VTS Media-owned Camgirl network was left unprotected by a password for weeks. The database allowed anyone to access months-worth of daily logs of cam girl activities. These include usernames, IP addresses, browser user agents, private chat messages, viewing habits and even attempted login passwords – in plain text.
It also contained the private details of the models themselves, including full names (with their birthdates), home address, phone number, email addresses, bank account information and even passport and ID photos and release forms. It was a serious oversight, and one that put the girls at potential risk of identity theft and even financial fraud.
This data was allegedly exposed in a breach that occurred when the company’s security team performed a server reconfiguration. A backup server was not properly configured, and the files were subsequently made public by a hacker, reports vpnMentor.
These files also reveal the amount of deposits and withdrawals made to the cam girls’ Paxum accounts, which can be used to track their activity online. This includes the amounts of money the girls have received from their viewers, as well as the dates and times of their most recent transfers. In some cases, this data reveals the full list of addresses the cam girls use to receive payments. It also reveals the gender they were assigned at birth and details about their army service if applicable.
The data was taken from a server in the United States, but some of the models live internationally, and their identities could have been exposed to privacy laws in other countries. This could expose them to GDPR breaches, which require consent from users before releasing their personal data.