Your Cam Shows Are Being Recorded: The Recu.me Problem

You probably know about screen recording. A few fans capturing clips. That's annoying but manageable. What you might not know is that there's an industrial operation recording every second of your streams, hosting 217 million hours of content, and selling subscriptions with features like "Add 10 performers to recording" and "120 high speed downloads per day." This isn't some amateur with OBS. This is a business. And you're the product.

Our Investigation

At Leakless, we spent weeks investigating Recu.me (formerly Recurbate.com) to understand the scale of webcam piracy targeting creators. We analyzed 441,036 recordings from 4,547 performers to understand how this operation works, how much content they're hosting, and most importantly, how they're profiting from stolen content.

What we found was far worse than we expected.

The Numbers Behind the Theft

According to Recu.me's own homepage, they're currently hosting:

• 217,443,562 hours of video (that's over 24,800 years of content)
• 391,410 performers archived without consent
• 7.48 million monthly visitors (January 2025 data via Semrush)

From our sample analysis of 441,036 videos, here's what we discovered:

Average per creator:

• 76.4 videos archived
• 89.2 minutes per video (nearly 1.5 hours)
• 889 views per video

Duration breakdown:

• 49% of videos are over 1 hour long
• 7.8% exceed 4 hours
• The longest category? 1-2 hour streams (23.1%)

The long tail problem:

• 71% of stolen content has under 1,000 views
• 27.2% have under 100 views (barely watched at all)
• Only 10 videos total exceeded 100,000 views

What does this mean? Most of your stolen content isn't even popular. They're archiving everything indiscriminately, whether it gets views or not. It's not about quality or demand. It's about volume.

How They Make Money (From Your Content)

Recu.me operates on a subscription model with four tiers:

BASIC (€0/month)

• "Forever free" but no videos available
• Designed to frustrate users into upgrading

PREMIUM (€19.99/month) - "Most popular"

• Unlimited video access
• Can request 2 specific performers be recorded
• No downloads

ULTIMATE (€29.99/month)

• Request 3 performers be recorded
• 30 high-speed downloads per day
• Bulk discounts up to 30% off

TITANIUM (€49.99/month)

• Request 10 performers be recorded
• 120 high-speed downloads per day
• Priority support
• Video fragment editing tools

Additional revenue streams:

• Affiliate program (referrers get 15 bonus days per signup)
• "Become an Affiliate" commission structure
• User-contributed "Recorder" feature

Let's do conservative math. If just 0.5% of their 7.48 million monthly visitors convert to the €19.99 tier, that's €747,000 per month (nearly $800,000). From stolen content. Content they didn't create, don't own, and have no rights to distribute.

The Technical Infrastructure (Why Takedowns Are Hard)

Through our investigation, we identified the complete technical infrastructure behind Recu.me. This isn't a single website. It's a network designed to resist takedowns.

The three-layer system:

1. Frontend: recu.me
   • Registered August 31, 2023 (14 days after Recurbate.com seizure)
   • Registrar: Porkbun LLC
   • Location: North Carolina, US
   • Protected by Cloudflare
2. CDN Infrastructure: mediafront.net
   • Distributed edge servers (f1.mediafront.net through fn.mediafront.net)
   • Same registrar (Porkbun LLC)
   • Handles actual content delivery
   • Also behind Cloudflare
3. Payment Processing: starativi.com
   • Presents as "legitimate" cloud hosting business
   • 14-year-old domain (acquired for legitimacy)
   • Handles crypto and credit card payments
   • Same registrar, same privacy service, same location
   • Cloudflare protected

Technical specs we identified:

• 1080p @ 60fps HLS streaming
• ~550 Kbps bitrate
• Multiple numbered edge servers for load distribution
• Cloudflare DDoS protection on all domains

Why this matters: When you file a DMCA takedown, you're not just fighting one website. You're fighting a compartmentalized network where the payment processor is separated from the content delivery system, which is separated from the user-facing site. Each layer has its own Cloudflare protection, making origin server identification nearly impossible.

The Legal History (Seizure and Resurrection)

September 7, 2023: Multi Media, LLC (Chaturbate's parent company) filed a UDRP complaint with WIPO against Recurbate.com.

The allegations:

• Trademark infringement ("Recurbate" vs "Chaturbate")
• Unauthorized content archiving
• Commercial gain from Chaturbate's reputation
• Bad faith domain registration

November 2, 2023: WIPO ruled in Chaturbate's favor. Recurbate.com, along with .cc and .xyz variants, were ordered transferred to Chaturbate.

August 31, 2023: Wait. That date is before the ruling, right? Correct. While the WIPO case was still pending, someone registered recu.me. They knew they were going to lose and prepared the rebrand in advance.

Current status: Recu.me operates openly with the same features, same infrastructure, and even larger scale than the original Recurbate. The WIPO seizure accomplished nothing.

What Creators Are Saying

We reviewed complaints from performers on Trustpilot and found consistent patterns:

"This website recorded my streams without my permission and posted them to their website. They need taking down! This is infringement of my rights. I'm so angry and upset. They have no right to record me and use it for their own gain thus taking custom from me!"

"Recurbate has been stealing my copyrighted content behind my back for MONTHS. I requested they delete my performer account which is them, posing as myself, and they refuse. They don't follow DMCA laws."

"sad news for fans, Recurbate started deleting records, since last year Recurbate have been deleting all non-popular records."

The last comment reveals another dimension: they're not just archiving content indefinitely. They're curating it, deleting "non-popular" content to save server costs while keeping the high-view material. This isn't passive archiving. This is active content management for profit.

Why Standard DMCA Takedowns Don't Work

If you've tried to get your content removed from Recu.me, you've probably experienced the frustration. Here's why standard approaches fail:

1. Cloudflare's shield All three domains hide behind Cloudflare. When you send a DMCA notice, you're hitting Cloudflare's abuse team, not the operators. Cloudflare typically only removes content for valid copyright claims, but the process is slow and requires perfect documentation.

2. Multiple edge servers Your content isn't hosted in one place. It's distributed across f1, f2, f3... fn.mediafront.net servers. Taking down one link doesn't remove the content. It just breaks one delivery path.

3. Privacy-protected WHOIS All domains use "Private by Design, LLC" privacy service. Good luck identifying the actual operators for legal action.

4. Payment processor separation Even if you could somehow get recu.me taken down, the payment infrastructure (starativi.com) is separated and presents as a legitimate business. They'd just spin up a new frontend.

5. Offshore-friendly infrastructure The entire operation is built to be jurisdiction-proof. Domains registered through privacy services, payments processed through crypto-friendly gateways, content distributed globally via Cloudflare.

What You Can Do (Realistic Protection Strategies)

We won't sugarcoat it: completely removing your content from piracy sites like Recu.me is nearly impossible. But you can make it harder for them and limit the damage.

Immediate actions:

1. Document everything
   • Screenshot your archived content with URLs and dates
   • Note how many videos, total views, and any subscriber counts visible
   • This evidence is crucial for any legal action
2. File strategic DMCA notices
   • Focus on the highest-view content first
   • Use Cloudflare's abuse form directly (not just email)
   • Include specific URLs for each video, not bulk requests
   • Follow up every 7 days
3. Request search engine delisting
   • Google and Bing will delist URLs from search results
   • File through Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
   • This doesn't remove content but makes it harder to find
4. Watermark your streams
   • Add visible watermarks with your official links
   • Makes redistribution less appealing (but won't stop recording)

Long-term protection:

This is where professional DMCA services become essential. At Leakless, we handle the infrastructure challenges that make DIY takedowns ineffective:

• Automated scanning across all edge servers (not just main domains)
• Bulk DMCA filing with proper legal formatting
• Search engine delisting at scale
• Follow-up enforcement when sites ignore initial notices
• Deepfake and impersonation protection (increasingly common)

The reality is that fighting industrial piracy operations requires industrial tools. One-off DMCA notices won't keep up with sites recording 24/7.

The Bigger Picture: Why This Matters

Recu.me isn't unique. It's just the biggest and most visible webcam piracy operation. Our research shows there are dozens of similar sites using the same technical playbook:

• Aged domains for payment processing
• Cloudflare for all infrastructure
• Privacy-protected WHOIS
• Multiple content delivery servers
• Subscription-based monetization

The webcam piracy ecosystem includes:

• Archive sites (like Recu.me)
• Torrent communities
• Discord servers trading recordings
• Telegram channels
• "Leaks" forums
• Deepfake generators using stolen footage

Each creator feeds this entire ecosystem. Every minute you stream, you're creating content that will be monetized by others, often in ways you never intended.

Final Thoughts

When you started creating content, you probably thought about the usual challenges: building an audience, dealing with difficult viewers, managing your schedule. You probably didn't think you'd be fighting a multi-million dollar piracy operation with distributed infrastructure, legal protection, and zero respect for your rights.

But here we are.

217 million hours of stolen content. 391,000 creators affected. €49.99 per month subscriptions. Zero dollars to you.

The operators behind Recu.me know exactly what they're doing. They prepared for the Recurbate seizure before it even happened. They built their infrastructure specifically to resist takedowns. They're not going to stop because it's the right thing to do.

But that doesn't mean you're powerless.

Understanding how these operations work is the first step. Knowing their infrastructure, their monetization, and their vulnerabilities gives you options. Whether you tackle this yourself or work with a service like Leakless, the important thing is to start fighting back.

Your content. Your rights. Your livelihood.

Don't let them profit from your work without a fight.