Escort services are using webcams in hotel rooms to blackmail their clients, according to the Wi-Fi provider Airangel.
Small webcams hidden in hotel rooms are used to capture images of the customer with the prostitute, with a hotel concierge of the hotel usually involved in the scam as well.
David Riches, technical director at Airangel, said: "It goes through peaks and troughs. It’s usually in student towns we see it, and maybe once a year a little flux of them will pop up."
Asked why student towns were a common location for the crime, Riches said he would guess that there was a higher level of escort girls in student towns.
"If we typically go through where these incidents have happened they are Cambridge or High Wycombe – places like that where you have got a university," he said.
Thames Valley Police, whose jurisdiction includes High Wycombe, said it had not any reports of this type of offence, while Cambridgeshire Constabulary similarly said it had no reports that tallied with it.
Airangel facilitates internet access in hotels, campsites and conference centres, and includes the Ritz London, Park Plaza and Holiday Inn Express among its customers.
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