From death threats to stalkers, the sinister side of £1billion X-rated videos website OnlyFans
IN lockdown, stunning Kaya Corbridge made £150,000 posting X-rated photos and videos of herself on subscription website OnlyFans.
She is one of millions of regular people — from teachers and nurses to waitresses and firefighters — joining celebrities and fitness experts on the site that allows users to share content directly with subscribers.
Last month Disney actress Bella Thorne became the first person to earn $1million within 24 hours of signing up, and British celebs including Megan Barton-Hanson, Kerry Katona and Lauren Goodger have now joined, too.
But while it may seem a fast and glamorous way to make cash, today The Sun on Sunday can reveal its dark and sinister side.
Creators risk their private videos being stolen and sold online. And there are fears the platform — which has an estimated annual turnover of £1.2billion — has become a playground for stalkers to terrorise women.
Former student Kaya, 24, said: “Since being on OnlyFans I have been stalked and had many death threats.
“At times it has been absolutely terrifying. One death threat that sticks with me is when a random guy sent me a picture of a shovel.
“He told me that was the shovel he was going to use once he’d cut up my body into tiny pieces and buried me.
“He kept saying that all workers like me deserved to be killed.
“I also had a message saying, ‘This is your address,’ and a picture of my house. I was so scared.
“I had a stalker for over 18 months — the worst part was that she was female. She harassed me online every single day, multiple hours a day.
'FEED MEN'S EGO'
“She spread hurtful comments, messaged my friends and tried to find my family members.
“She set up fake profiles of me and even emailed random people from my home town pretending to be my long-lost brother in the hope of finding my family members to do whatever crazy things she had planned.”
As well as sharing sexy snaps, Kaya, from Lancashire, admits one of the most popular features on her site is rating men’s privates. This alone sees her rake in nearly £30,000 a year.
She said: “Men love to have their ego fed. I do the ratings via text, voicenote or video, which is the most expensive option.”
Our investigation today shows that Kaya is far from alone when it comes to being stalked or terrorised on the adult website.
Stephanie Palomares, 28, a Kim Kardashian lookalike from Las Vegas, has had to call police to her house.
She said: “Stalkers are a problem on OnlyFans.
“I have one ongoing right now. He’s been stalking me, as far as I’m aware, since about December 2019.”
The site also falls prey to cyber criminals who steal videos and pictures to trade on the dark web or sell on lucrative black market sites.
During lockdown, the UK’s Revenge Porn Helpline received scores of complaints from OnlyFans users about their content being shared without consent.
Helpline manager Sophie Mortimer told us: “What started out as a way to make a bit of extra money during these difficult times is increasingly turning into a nightmare.
“Many users are ending up in danger and at huge risk of being abused and exploited.”
Rachel Horman-Brown, a solicitor who works with Paladin, the National Stalking Advocacy Service, added that women need to be careful before going on the site.
She said: “I’ve come across several cases where women have experienced abuse via this website. Receiving rape threats and sexual threats are commonplace, which is appalling.
“Women are regularly stalked and murdered by men, and sites like this can facilitate stalking in a way that wasn’t possible a few years ago.”
As fans bombard women with requests for specific content, many perform in videos they are not comfortable with because they are driven by an “addictive” pursuit to earn the most cash.
Gemma, who works as a legal assistant in the north east of England, told us: “I only earn a couple of hundred quid a week, which helps me make ends meet.
“The more explicit the video, the more men are willing to pay. I don’t go there but it is tempting.” Former influencer and YouTube star Celestia Vega, 22, recently quit the platform after ending up in rehab.
'I FELT HORRIBLE'
She said: “I felt like I had to keep getting more extreme. I told myself that I was empowered and wanted to pretend that I was, but I felt horrible.
“I was smiling in the pictures but I wasn’t there. I was doing things like a robot.
“And I couldn’t stop because everyone was telling me I had to keep going. I was being forced. Honestly, it felt like that.”
Linda Thomson, of the Women’s Support Project, said that while the site may be seen as empowering and lucrative, in reality it is fraught with risk.
She said: “Our concern is users don’t have all the information about how risky these sites can be and how they are failing to protect the women.”
Despite having a minimum sign-up age of 18, there is also concern that under-age girls are selling content on the platform which, in turn, creates a potential new breeding ground for paedophiles.
One 17-year-old told how she had been making £15,000 to £20,000 a month since the age of 16.
Andy Burrows, head of child safety online policy at the NSPCC, said: “We urgently need laws to protect our kids online.”
OnlyFans had just a few hundred subscribers when it was set up in 2016, but figures rocketed during lockdown. In April, it gained around 150,000 new fans every 24 hours. It now has 50MILLION.
To enter the website, fans need to subscribe and pay anywhere from £3.90 to £39 a month for pictures from their favourite creators. OnlyFans takes a 20 per cent cut. Subscribers can also pay for private messages and pay-per-view videos.
The number of content creators also rocketed during lockdown, from 200,000 to 700,000. Some were sex workers unable to meet clients in person.
Others were regular people just trying to make ends meet.
Last week a primary school teacher from Buckinghamshire was fired for moonlighting on OnlyFans as a £1,500-a- night escort.
We also found nurses and lawyers, plus nannies, supermarket workers and coffee shop staff on the website, along with firefighters, soldiers and builders.
One profile for a history teacher in her 50s says she started posting explicit videos while her school was closed during lockdown.
And a young nurse from London asks fans if they want to look under her uniform.
In a video titled Saturday Shift Flash, she appears to be in a staff-room with posters for the Royal College of Nursing union on the wall.
OnlyFans was founded by Timothy Stokely, 37, from Herts. Last summer the banker’s son paid £2.4million for his home in Bishop’s Stortford.
'OPENED THE DOOR TO CRIMINALS'
But the success of his venture has opened the door to criminals.
It is estimated that around 3million photos and 750 hours of video have been leaked from the site this year.
This week one fraudster claimed he set up a fake account with content stolen from an OnlyFans creator and made £6,107 in the space of a few days. Kaya is now trying to set up a sex and adult content workers union to boost users’ safety.
She said: “Every single day my content gets leaked or I get spoken about on forums and websites. This is the worst part of the job.
“Sites that use stolen content should be fined and closed down.”
But that will not be the end of the problems.
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Honza Cervenka, from law firm McAllister Olivarius, who specialises in OnlyFans cases, said the repercussions of appearing on the website could last a lifetime.
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He told us: “Trying to get all the videos removed is like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.
“The truth is some people who appear on this site could end up looking over their shoulder for the rest of their life.”
HOW IT WORKS
ONLYFANS is a social media site that lets “creators” post content – such as pictures and video clips – for their “fans”, who pay them via subscriptions or one-off tips.
Bosses say it was set up for creators from the worlds of “fitness, dancing, DJs to music” with the idea that real fans would pay a fee to see what their idols produced.
It is also filled with X-rated content from predominantly young female models.
Fans can pay up to £39 a month to follow a creator, who will generally post about three things a day.
Creators can charge more though – and they can also charge for special requests and personalised messages.
Last year the New York Times said that OnlyFans had changed sex work for ever, dubbing it “the paywall of porn”.
In one interview, founder Timothy Stokely, who says he always had ambitions of becoming a tech entrepreneur, said he had “stumbled across the appeal of fetish movies on the web” as a student.
He founded fetish clip site Glam Worship in 2011 before launching similar site Customs4U with his father, Guy, in 2013.
OnlyFans has grown from four employees in 2018 to 250 globally, including 50 in the UK. It has 30million users.
Almost 33 per cent of the performers are between 22 and 25 years old, and 29 per cent are between 18 and 21.
The company says creators with 10,000 followers can earn between £400 and £2,000 a month.
But the site, which takes a 20 per cent cut of earnings, has been hit with controversy – with videos stolen from its platform turning up on websites including Pornhub.
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