OnlyFans Creators Are Accidentally Revealing Hacked Government Websites
A new analysis by cybersecurity firm UpGuard shows that DMCA takedown requests filed by adult content creators are inadvertently exposing thousands of compromised government and university websites used for scams.
Adult content creators like Laura Lux (a pseudonym) have long battled content theft. They file massive numbers of DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notices to remove pirated material from Google search results. However, a new analysis from cybersecurity company UpGuard reveals that these takedown requests are inadvertently uncovering a different problem: thousands of hacked government and university websites.
Since 2011, more than 2,000 .gov and .edu domains across 80 countries have received copyright takedown requests linked to adult content, indicating they may have been compromised. Scammers hijack these authoritative sites to host malicious pages offering fake movie downloads, porn, or Fortnite skins, often using popular OnlyFans creators' names as bait. Since 2020, there has been a dramatic increase in such hijackings.
UpGuard's research counted 384,286 takedown requests covering 631,193 URLs from adult creators to these domains. Google has removed about 130,000 URLs, while 460,000 remain unprocessed. The vast majority of recent requests come from one Estonian company, Rulta.
Experts note that DMCA requests are not the right tool for cleaning hacked sites, but they can serve as a warning signal for site administrators. Laura Lux says she is not surprised her name is used in this way, adding ironically, "I guess sex workers save the world again."
