The insider who first reported that the HIV status and other private information about thousands of porn stars had been leaked on the Internet expressed skepticism over one clinic's investigation of the leak.
Mike South, a former porn star-turned blogger, was the first to report the leaked information, which he said came at least in part from AIM Medical Associates, P.C in Sherman Oaks. The health clinic regularly tests local porn stars for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
On Thursday, AIM attorney Jeffrey Douglas announced that the clinic is investigating the leak.
South questioned the timing of AIM's announcement, saying he suspects the breach of confidential information occurred months ago, at which time the clinic asked everyone to change their passwords. The announcement came on Thursday after the story received wide press coverage.
"I'm not saying AIM intentionally did anything wrong … What they're doing is buying time to sweep it under the rug," he said. "A week from today, this is not going to be a hot story."
South said in addition to information about the performers, some profiles feature relatives. In one profile, pictures of a performer's parents are posted, as are their home addresses and phone numbers. On others, South said, users are encouraged to call the performer's parents and tell them their children are a disgrace.
Porn WikiLeaks, an open-source website, has posted the real names, birth dates, stage names and HIV status of more than 12,000 current and former performers since the domain name was created in December. The site was experiencing slow load times on Thursday.
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Some of the information posted on Porn WikiLeaks -- home addresses, for example -- is not stored in AIM's database, and therefore could not have been gathered from AIM, Douglas said.
"Other testing businesses may or may not have such information on their databases," said Douglas in a statement.
Jennifer Miller, a spokeswoman for AIM, told NBC LA on Thursday that the clinic was aggressively investigating the leak.
"I can't stress enough, we're victims of a crime," Miller said. "Just like the Pentagon and the FBI, we have been victimized and hacked. We are investigating and we will press all charges."
