Punternet , also known as Punternet. Customers are referred to as "punters" on the website. The website was initially an information source run by enthusiasts and service users rather than a commercial enterprise. The London Evening Standard newspaper called it "the most successful of the prostitute-reviewing internet sites". The reviews, originally called "field reports", were written almost exclusively by men and described heterosexual encounters with female sex workers.
The site was sold in August and the new owners dropped the discussion boards from the site. Previously this had been limited to female escorts only. The site offers free membership. Free members can submit reviews and access site features and a limited search function. The site has been met with criticism, most notably in from Harriet Harman.
In , Trishna Datta, a former outreach worker from Ilford , Essex, launched a petition to have the Punternet website taken down. She said the website lacked adequate safety measures to ensure details that could put sex workers in danger were not revealed.
Additionally, she expressed concern that some of the sex workers reviewed on the site might be underage or victims of trafficking or sexual assault. Punternet commented that it would report underage prostitutes to the authorities, and that it encourages customers to report underage prostitutes and victims of trafficking to Crimestoppers UK.
Data from Punternet was used [ 14 ] by Peter Moffatt and Simon Peters, both lecturers in econometrics , [ 15 ] [ 16 ] in their work " Pricing personal services: An empirical study of earnings in the UK prostitution industry ".
