Mike South writes on www.mikesouth.com – Two weeks ago I got an email with a link that simply said you need to see this.

I followed the link and in it were open directories that contained the photo IDs, credit cards, social security cards and phone numbers, AIM tests and model releases of pretty much every person in the biz.

You want Teras Name, address, SSN, phone number? What about Sasha Grey, Jenna Haze, Tommy Gunn, Evan Stone, Lisa Ann, just to name a VERY few.

Now when someone hands you something like this you think WOW and once the shock wears off you think OK what’s the best thing to do with this. First thing I wanted to know was who owns it. A little digging and it was apparent that it belonged to an affiliate program called incredibledollars, well known for shady dealings in the adult web world, things like prechecked cross sells and credit card slams were but a few of their tactics. They were hidden behind a myriad of offshore companies.

I called Paul Fishbein at AVN and showed him what I had and suggested that as an industry we might be able to use this to our advantage. He was stunned just as I was and he put me in touch with Mark Kernes, who was also shocked.

Mark wanted to turn it over to the lawyers at FSC and those handling the 2257 lawsuit. I agreed with that tactic and they kept me in the loop while they collected the info there and then made efforts to shut it down, which they finally did by contacting the hosting company.

The scary thing is that IncredibleDollars bought content from lots of people in the biz and that is how they got all of this info, it came with the content presumably to satisfy 2257 requirements.

Incredibledollars is just one of hundreds and probably thousands of people who got this kind of info and posted it to a site, thinking nobody could find it.

This is one of many reasons why 2257 is such a horrible idea. Imagine all the people who have access to this type of info who really shouldn’t. It’s like if I buy a DVD of Sin City I get Bruce Willis’s ID and SSN along with Jessica Alba’s and Rosario Dawsons etc….. It’s just insanity.

What it made me realize is that with just a few keystrokes in google I can get the personal info on anyone in this biz, easily…it’s all just a matter of knowing how to find it.

Kudos to AVN and The Free Speech Coalition for handling this properly and I hope that it can be used to help defeat 2257.