Police have warned about the threat of “bait out” groups, online pages where users share nude images of their peers who are then often bullied.

Statistics released by Kent Police show a tripling of crime reports for sexual messages between 2015 and 2017.

Sharing indecent images of a child is illegal in the UK, even if the person doing it is themselves a child.

Detective Superintendent Susie Harper from Kent Police told The Telegraph: “People that set up these ‘bait out’ groups do it for the purpose of humiliating people, like a form of bullying.”

“It is a national phenomenon. Sometimes the images can be taken in a consensual relationship... the victim agrees to an image being taken because, in good faith, they think it will just be used by the boyfriend or girlfriend in the relationship.”

Teenagers often launch social media pages and only grant access to them once a sexual image, video or gossip has been shared, according to ChildNet.