Revenge porn is an epidemic

Andrea Eldridge | Nerd Chick Adventures

Revenge porn is when someone shares illicit images or videos of another person without that person's permission with the intent of causing embarrassment or distress.

This alarming trend is on the rise — a recent study by Data & Society Research Institute found that 1 in 25 Americans has been a victim of revenge porn. If you’ve ever sent an ex a racy photo or video, or if you may have been filmed without your consent, you could someday be the victim of revenge porn.

According to a 2014 McAfee study about Love, Relationships and Technology, 54 percent of the more than 1,500 surveyed respondents reported that they sent or received intimate content including video, photos, emails and messages. While it seems fun and exciting at the time, these explicit images or videos can be easily shared by the recipient or someone else who gets a hold of them.

A video report by Broadly, "Inside the Torturous Fight to End Revenge Porn," states that “10 percent of people who have been through a breakup have threatened their ex with some form of exposure. Thousands of victims are targeted for revenge porn every year and 90 percent of them are women.”

Once images are posted online, it’s nearly impossible to stop them from spreading. There are thousands of revenge porn websites that allow users to upload non-consensual images and videos, and children as young as 12 are falling victim as a revenge porn epidemic sweeps the internet. The ramifications to victims are real and heartbreaking: victims are often socially ostracized, can lose their job and suffer humiliation among their peers, often experience depression, and several victims have committed suicide.

While 34 states have laws against revenge porn, victims often struggle to get law enforcement to take action. Victims are told that there isn’t anything that can be done and internet-based crimes are difficult to establish jurisdiction over. It’s challenging to prove a specific perpetrator, particularly once images or videos are copied and shared.

Luckily, awareness has led some of the leading search engines and social media sites to enact policies to help victims get images removed from their sites.

In 2015, Google published a policy and webform that people can use to request the removal of unauthorized images from Google Search Results. While Google doesn’t typically remove images or information posted online, sexually explicit images that are reported to have been posted without consent will now be removed.

One month after Google announced their policy against image-based abuse, Microsoft promised to remove links to photos and videos from search results in Bing, and remove access to the content itself when shared on OneDrive or Xbox Live, when images are reported by the victim via a reporting web page.

In April 2017, Facebook rolled out new tools designed to help identify and restrict the sharing of intimate images shared without consent on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. If you see an image on Facebook that looks like it was posted without permission, click the downward arrow in the upper right corner of the post and select “Report post.” If the image is found to be in violation of Facebook’s Community Standards, the image will be removed and the posting account disabled for sharing intimate images without permission. After an image has been reported and removed, Facebook will then use photo-matching technology to identify and stop attempts to share the image on Facebook, Messenger or Instagram.

None of these policies actually remove images from the Internet, but they are a step in the right direction toward offering victims a voice and a starting point in the arduous process of getting images removed from high traffic websites and search results.

How do you avoid becoming a victim? Not sharing intimate images or videos with others — even those you trust — is the most reliable way to avoid becoming victimized. There is still the chance that images taken without your permission could be shared, but the likelihood of images you provide willingly to another person being shared without your consent is significantly higher.

If you do elect to share sexual images or videos despite the risks, use a secure messaging app like Privatext (http://www.privatext.co) to make it more challenging for the recipient to forward, save or share anything you send them via the app. Note that images could be saved via screen capture, but Privatext makes it harder than standard text or email.

You could alternatively use a file sharing service like SecureShare (https://securesha.re) that will encrypt files and allow you to set specific limits on the number of times they can be viewed and/or how long they will be available to the recipient of a unique link you send. Files will be automatically deleted after seven days or once they have been viewed the maximum number of times. Some cite concerns about storing sensitive data on a third-party server. However, files are encrypted with 128-bit client-side AES encryption and SecureShare doesn’t maintain the cipher key so they cannot decrypt your data.

For more information about revenge porn, including answers to victim FAQs and helpful resources, visit the website of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative at www.cybercivilrights.org.

Nerd Chick Adventures is written by Andrea Eldridge and Heather Neal from Nerds On Call, an onsite computer and laptop repair company in Redding. They can be reached at nerdchick@callnerds.com.