from – www.defamer.com.au – The patient database of the private health clinic that conducts STD tests for California’s porn industry has been breached, exposing test results and personal details about current and former porn performers, some of which have been published on a Wikileaks-style website.

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 and date of birth. This essentially “outed” them to any passing Googler, which caused an uproar in the industry since many porn performers try to keep their real name secret, for obvious reasons. That 15,000 names were on the list was significant, especially considering only about 1,200-1,500 performers are currently working in California’s Porn Valley.

It turns out that many of the names came from a database belonging to the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM), which conducts the majority of STD tests for the porn industry. (Working straight performers get tested at least once every 28 days.) The porn gossip blogger Mike South was the first to report the breach after he was contacted by a number of porn performers who said the information posted about them on Porn Wikileaks must have come from AIM’s database. Their proof: They had only used the stage names that were posted on Porn Wikileaks once, when registering for testing at AIM.

One former porn performer we spoke to registered for an HIV test with AIM using a stage name he came up with “off the top of my head” when he started in the industry eight years ago—and he never used it again. (He picked a new stage name when he appeared in his first adult video.) But the stage name he used at AIM recently appeared on Porn Wikileaks attached to his real name. That stage name “was never used, it was never spoken anywhere else. It was written down one time and one time only and that was on the HIV form for AIM,” he said. “Without a question [the leak] came from AIM.”

Mark Spiegler, a well-known porn talent agent, said he was also convinced much of the information on Porn Wikileaks comes from AIM. “That’s the only place you’re going to find it,” Spiegler said.

But why did this information start showing up on Porn Wikileaks? Members of Porn Wikileaks have made a sport of sorts of violating porn performers’ privacy, often to avenge some personal slight. Many entries in their massive porn star wiki contain not just a performer’s real name and date of birth, but also their addresses, family members’ names, copies of state identification—even Google Maps pictures of their homes. So far, Porn Wikileaks has yet to post any test results, probably to avoid violating patient privacy laws. But the forum contains numerous mentions of posting AIM data.

It’s unclear how the information was leaked to Porn Wikileaks, but access to the database is widespread in the porn industry. “Hundreds” of porn producers and directors can access the AIM database using a password and username in a web interface, said Mike South, the blogger. Said another porn insider: “Everyone who has at one point used AIM’s services for a production has access to that database, and I know that people in the past have given out the passwords unscrupulously.”

AIM’s database is a crucial resource for porn producers and directors in Porn Valley, who use it to make sure that their performers’ tests are up to date. “I think AIM is great,” said director Lee Roy Meyers. “For our industry, it’s a company that keeps us as safe as we possibly can be, disease-wise.”

But news of the breach will undoubtedly shake trust in AIM, which was founded 14 years ago by former porn actress Sharon Mitchell and has frequently been battered by controversy. Just last year, LA County health officials briefly shut down AIM after it was discovered to be running without a proper licence. Also last year, two former porn actresses sued AIM over the very STD test database that has been leaked, arguing it violated California patient privacy law.

When reached for comment, an anonymous Porn Wikileaks administrator didn’t confirm or deny that their information came from AIM:

“We purposely encourage people to post as anonymously as possible using proxies and internet cafes when sending leaks so they can not be tracked and this leak came from a anonymous source that can not be tracked. It is possible some names came from AIM but with so many companies who knows. We would also guess that AIM’s database would have a lot more names than what we got but who knows.”

When we called AIM’s Sherman Oaks headquarters, AIM spokeswoman Jennifer Miller was meeting with AIM’s lawyers about the leak.