Spycams hidden in Chinese hotels record unsuspecting people having sex before streaming it online
The scourge of secret spycams hidden in hotel rooms has become so widespread in China that people are sharing tips on social media on how to detect them.
Unsuspecting people have found footage of themselves on Chinese porn sites after staying in hotels across the country.
It is known as spycam porn, and it has been steadily flooding porn sites over the past decade, turning people’s intimate moments into a twisted moneymaker.
The problem has grown so bad that the Chinese authorities have stepped in, with new laws requiring hotel owners to regularly sweep rooms for any hidden devices.
People, especially women, regularly share tips on social media on how to avoid clandestine filming.
In a desperate attempt to ensure her privacy, a woman from Henan province went viral last year after using a makeshift tent to protect her bed while staying at an unnamed hotel in China.
Some of the cameras can be almost impossible to spot if you are not specifically looking for them, with some clandestine devices measuring just an inch.
While making and distributing porn is illegal in China, unscrupulous websites are booming.
The secretly filmed content, some of it live camera streams, is available for less than £50 per month.
Dozens of cameras were found to broadcast livestreams on the spy-cam websites, a BBC investigation revealed.
Users could choose between different filming feeds after logging in, with cameras angled directly at the bed from above.
Over the course of 18 months, the BBC tracked a spycam porn trader known as ‘AKA’, which offered a Telegram channel for viewers to also comment on hotel guests, with their appearance and conversations being judged.
Women were reportedly regularly described as ‘sluts’ and ‘bitches’ by unscrupulous viewers.
The investigators were able to track one of the spy cameras to a hotel room in Zhengzhou, where it was hidden in the wall ventilation unit and connected to the electricity supply.
While this camera was taken down after being spotted, another one quickly sprang up in another hotel room, the BBC reports.
‘AKA’ was estimated to have made at least around £16,300 from spycams since April last year, based on membership numbers on the Telegram channel and subscription fees.
One spycam consumer, a man named under the pseudonym Eric, from Hong Kong, quickly quit watching spycam content after finding footage of himself and his girlfriend plastered on a website.
Eric, in his 30s, had been drawn to spycam content since his teens because ‘traditional porn feels very staged, very fake.’
But when he started to watch a clip of a couple having sex in a hotel room in 2023, he realised the two unsuspecting people were himself and his girlfriend. The video was captured when they stayed in a hotel room in Shenzhen, in southern China.
The video left his girlfriend mortified and scared her colleagues and family could see it. The couple didn’t see each other for weeks as they processed the shocking discovery.
Under China’s new rules on surveillance devices in private spaces, companies or individuals are not allowed to install cameras where they could be used for eavesdropping and breaching privacy like hotel and changing rooms.
Those caught violating the rules could be fined up to 20,000 yuan (£2,120).
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.