Wikipedia Exposes Porn Performers to Stalking, Harassment—And Visits From CPS (Jezebel)

Read the full article by Tracy Clark-Flory at Jezebel.com 

Last week, a porn performer had Child Protective Services show up unannounced at her front door after an anonymous caller falsely claimed she was throwing “swinger parties” in front of her children. The caller lacked the kind of intimate knowledge one would expect of someone who personally knew the performer, who uses a stage name. But they did have one crucial bit of information: her legal name.

The performer can’t know for sure who made the call, or why, but she guesses that it was someone who, as she put it, “disagreed with my line of work.” Similarly, she can’t know for sure where they got her legal name, allowing them to make the report, but she has a strong guess: Wikipedia. “They used that information to try to remove my children from my home,” she told me, speaking on condition of anonymity, out of fear that others might get the idea to make similar CPS calls.

This woman is just one of dozens of porn performers who have had their legal names published on Wikipedia, right alongside their stage names. The site isn’t alone: IMDb, that cataloger of mainstream Hollywood acting credits, also houses legal names.