By Mogomotsi Magome

Young people around Pretoria are being exposed to a pornographic website that is gaining popularity among youngsters around SA.

The website has already attracted thousands of members from cities around the country, including Cape Town, Joburg, Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein.

Though it is not clear how long the site has been in existence, by late afternoon yesterday it had 24 394 members signed up.

While using the site, Sondeza, young people can organise sex parties and exchange photographs and video footage of themselves having sex or posing nude.

Often email addresses and cellphone numbers are exchanged so the participants can meet each other face-to-face and "interact".

Like most social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the site allows for comments to be posted about photos and videos. They are also allowed to form private groups where they can interact and share content.

The website is dominated by young black people having sex at parties or other social gatherings or in their own "private" spaces.

Despite the privacy policy posted on the website that prohibits children younger than 18 from using it, one can easily enter wrong information and view the contents.

It took a Pretoria News reporter less than five minutes to post a profile that included all the wrong information, including name and age.

Furthermore, some people may be on the website without even realising they had been filmed.

In one instance, a 21-year-old posted pictures of his sisters sleeping naked in bed and received dozens of responses from people, some admiring his actions and others discouraging them.

In another instance, one member was surprised to find the pictures he took of his sexual partner the night they had sex posted on the site.

Some video footage and photographs are posted minutes after the members have apparently indulged in sexual activities.

Most of the advertising on the website includes job offers to work as prostitutes and opportunities to pay for sexual services from sex workers, both male and female.

Attempts to get hold of the owners of the website were unsuccessful as it contains wrong information.

For example, the address of the company is "27 Lepona Street, Gauteng", which translates to "27 Nude Street" and the telephone numbers listed contain more than 10 digits.

Dr Mpine Makoe, a researcher in social networking at Unisa, said it was important to separate networking over the internet with face-to-face interaction. But Makoe said it was almost impossible to regulate access to pornographic internet sites.