A Richardson man is being sued for his role in the website Texxxan.com, a “revenge porn” site that allows users to upload photos and videos of their ex-lovers in an attempt to embarrass and, in some cases, extort. The man, Kris Kronowski, is listed in a class-action lawsuit filed last week in Orange County; he is listed along with GoDaddy.com, the host for the site. The case is filed on behalf of two dozen women whose photos were included on the website, the Beaumont Enterprise reports.
Users can submit photos and videos, and subscribe for content. The women are broken down by region: North Texas, Southeast Texas, West and Central Texas, and South Central Texas. Most photos are accompanied by a first name, a last initial, and the woman’s hometown, making nearly every photo instantly identifiable by community members. It wouldn’t be hard to, say, recognize Serena Q. from Garland, if you knew Serena G. from Garland. (That name is made up.)
John Morgan, the attorney representing the class, is seeking unspecified damages from not just from the site’s owners and host, but the individuals who posted content. (Read the whole suit below.) He is also seeking an injunction to shut down the website; on Tuesday evening the site varied between being a live, active site and one featuring only an error message. When it was live, it featured a strange poll, seen below:
On Wednesday morning, the site was still live. Obviously users would vote to keep the site open, right? And for those in the dark, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act states that websites are not liable for content submitted by users.
The man seemingly at the center of this site is Kronowski, whose address is listed at 850 W. Campbell Road, Richardson. That’s UT-Dallas. I have an email in to UTD officials to confirm whether or not he was a student. According to school spokesman John Walls, though, “We’ve checked databases and no one by that name is listed as a student, former student or employee.” There’s not even a building with the 850 W. Campbell Road address, though UT-Dallas owns all the land north of W. Campbell Road in the 800 and 900 blocks. So now Kris Kronowski might be an alias, which further complicates the class action suit because who’s really being sued?
The Enterprise couldn’t find contact information for Kronowski, and I was similarly unsuccessful. His personal information has been removed from GoDaddy.com’s records, replaced by a boilerplate GoDaddy contact. I sent an email to [email protected], but I found that email address under a bright pink button that read “SUBMIT IMAGESÂ ANONYMOUSLY,” so I’m not holding my breath.
The screen-capture to the right seems to prove his involvement in Texxxan.com, though both his Google Plus account and Picasa account have been shut down and scrubbed; he doesn’t seem to have a public Facebook page or Twitter account.
The Beaumont Enterprise piece is worth your time, as it speaks of several of the women involved in the case. As for GoDaddy’s involvement, they sent a standard “We don’t comment on pending litigation” response to BetaBeat. I’ll update this post if I hear from UTD Â Kronowski.
