Man horrified after finding video of him having sex in hotel room on porn website

In 2023, a Hong Kong couple checked into a hotel in Shenzhen, southern China, before proceeding to have sex.

Weeks later, when the man - going under the pseudonym Eric - was scrolling through his regular go-to porn site, he could help but notice that one pair of adult actors looked alarmingly familiar.

Seconds later, it dawned upon Eric that he was watching himself.

The intimate clip in question had been secretly recorded using a hidden camera, showing Eric and his partner 'Emily' entering the room with their luggage, unpacking, before taking to the sheets.

The footage was then uploaded by criminal agents to the adult site Telegram as part of a trend known as Chinese spy-cam porn, which illegally skirts around the ban on the production and distribution of pornography across the country.

The couple discovered themselves on an illegal porn site (Getty Stock Image)

Cases of illegal filming have sky-rocketed in recent years, with sexual safety bodies attempting to raise awareness by of the different ways cameras can be hidden within hotel rooms.

The Chinese government also implemented legislation in April 2025, which called for hotel owners to regularly check their premises for recording devices.

Eric had been aware of the spy-cam porn site for several years, having consumed the content himself as a teenager.

He told the BBC he'd been attracted by the 'rawness' of the footage.

"What drew me in is the fact that the people don't know they're being filmed," the man, now in his 30s, explained.

"I think traditional porn feels very staged, very fake."

Little did he know as a youngster that he'd one day find himself a victim of the black market trend.

The couple had been unknowingly filmed (Getty Stock Image)

After breaking the news to his partner, she'd initially assumed Eric was joking until seeing the footage for herself.

Realising the clip could be accessed by her friends and colleagues, she called off their relationship to give them each time to think.

Investigative journalists from the BBC discovered that sites like Telegram are ran by agents for customers that pay a monthly fee of 450 Yuan ($65, £47).

Once in the site, they can choose between five different filming feeds, all which show footage filmed in hotels. The picture becomes visible as soon as a guest inserts their key card into the electricity supply.

Telegram's achieve also consists of over 6,000 archival videos.

Victims of such sexual cyber-crimes can seek help from Blue Li, who works at a Hong Kong-based NGO called RainLily. The company helps victims to remove secretly filmed footage of themselves from the internet.

The content is uploaded by cyber-criminals (Getty Stock Image)

According to Li, her services have never been more in-demand.

"We believe tech companies share the huge responsibility in addressing these problems," she explained.

"Because these companies are not neutral platforms; their policies shape how the content would be spread."

In response to the BBC's findings, a Telegram spokesperson claimed: "Sharing non-consensual pornography is explicitly forbidden by Telegram's terms of service." They added that the site 'proactively moderates' such content, 'and accepts reports [of inappropriate content] in order to remove millions of pieces of harmful content each day'.