How OnlyFans Creators Are Fighting Cyber Crime

Internet scamming is nothing new. As long as we’ve had the internet, we’ve had bad actors on the internet. Giving you everything from malware to annoying “free download” ads for movies that obviously are not free. Recently, however, these scammers have been using OnlyFans content creator’s names to lure people onto their malicious sites from official (safe) webpages and it’s been backfiring pretty badly. 

OnlyFans creator Lara Lux is no newbie, in fact, she’s been putting up adult content for almost 20 years. She says that, throughout her time as a content creator, one thing has remained the same: people trying to steal her stuff. She calls the fight against these internet pirates “an endless battle”, adding, “We do lose a lot of money just because the content is literally a Google search away a lot of the time.” But, Lux and other creators are trying to make the outcome different this time.

The content creator economy - and specifically OnlyFans - exploded during the pandemic and hasn’t looked back since. With growing influence in the industry, comes a much larger, synchronized revolt against piracy amongst OnlyFans creators. Just like other creative fields, adult creators are joining together and are turning the tables on these scammers.

Thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), OnlyFans creators actually have recourse when they see their work disseminated on the internet without their consent. They can submit a DMCA takedown request and, if successful, the page with the stolen information goes away. Lately, scammers have been attempting to redirect traffic on legitimate websites through pop-up ads that use some combination of the words “leak” and “OnlyFans”. Once someone clicks this ad, instead of OnlyFans leaks, they’re plopped onto a suspicious-looking page full of other suspicious-looking ads. 

Hacking has evolved over the years, so you no longer just see spam on “joesplumbing.com”, actually, most of these ads can be found on official government websites. Most DMCA takedown requests come from government or university webpages all over the world, namely Colombia, Nigeria, Peru, the United States, India and Bangladesh. Since 2011, analysis shows that over 384,286 takedown requests have been submitted, for more than 631,193 webpages. These requests have peaked in recent years, with Google taking action and removing approximately 130,000 URLs. On some 460,000 requests, however, no action has been taken. 

A lot of the time, it’s not the creators making these takedown requests, but the management companies and firms who represent them. One company, Rulta, based in Estonia, has accounted for 90% of DMCA takedown requests in the last few years. Research estimates about 11,000 content creator copyright owners are represented by 554 management companies. 

Scammers know that people looking for adult content can be a little click-happy and less concerned with where their clicks are taking them. But they didn’t realize how litigious OnlyFans creators really are. 

If you scroll down enough on someone’s OnlyFans bio, you’ll likely be greeted with a copyright disclaimer. OnlyFans creators have been vigilant in protecting themselves from piracy for years, so they’re always ready to pursue legal action at a moment’s notice, something these scammers clearly didn’t count on. 

With these numerous DMCA takedown requests, OnlyFans creators are perhaps unintentionally helping the good guys clean up the internet, and people are taking notice. As the adult content creation industry continues to see record growth, creators themselves are being taken more seriously. As soon as a takedown request is approved, the malicious webpage is taken off the internet. Even if creators are doing so more to protect their content than for internet law, it’s hard to argue with this swift brand of justice.