BBC: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One night in 2023, Eric was scrolling on a social media channel he regularly browsed for porn. Seconds into a video, he froze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He realised the couple he was watching – entering the room, setting down their bags, and later, having sex – was himself and his girlfriend. Three weeks earlier, they had spent the night in a hotel in Shenzhen, southern China, unaware that they were not alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their most intimate moments had been captured by a camera hidden in their hotel room, and the footage made available to thousands of strangers who had logged in to the channel Eric himself used to access pornography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eric (not his real name) was no longer just a consumer of China’s spy-cam porn industry, but a victim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Warning: This story contains some offensive language<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So-called spy-cam porn has existed in China for at least a decade, despite the fact that producing and distributing porn is illegal in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in the past couple of years the issue has become a regular talking point on social media, with people – particularly women – swapping tips on how to spot cameras as small as a pencil eraser. Some have even resorted to pitching tents inside hotel rooms to avoid being filmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last April, new government regulations attempted to stem this epidemic – requiring hotel owners to check regularly for hidden cameras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the threat of being secretly filmed in the privacy of a hotel room has not gone away. The BBC World Service has found thousands of recent spy-cam videos filmed in hotel rooms and sold as porn, on multiple sites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BBC: One night in 2023, Eric was scrolling on a social media channel he regularly browsed for porn. Seconds into a video, he froze. He realised the couple he was watching – entering the room, setting down their bags, and later, having sex – was himself and his girlfriend. Three weeks earlier, they had spent the night in a hotel in Shenzhen, southern China, unaware that they were not alone. Their most intimate moments had been captured by a camera hidden in their hotel room, and the footage made available to thousands of strangers who had logged in to the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54752,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54753,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54751\/revisions\/54753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}