A NUMBER of vile blogs are targeting unsuspecting members of the Australian public by setting up spy cameras or taking unsolicited pictures in gyms, public toilets and public transport.
The blogs, hosted by social networking site Tumblr, contain pictures of men in major cities including Sydney and Melbourne who have been filmed without their knowledge.
The blog uploads selfies and full body pictures of the men, both clothed and nude, which have been sent in by followers. They are either submitted personally or by means of revenge porn or catfishing. The host of the blog remains anonymous.
One blog includes requests for pictures of “100% STRAIGHT men fully nude”. It requires “faces to be shown, as well as the all important Straight C***”.
Others are dedicated to “spy cams” where smartphones are placed underneath or above toilet stalls to capture who and what is going on next to them.
Men are captured from behind at urinals, with captions that include, “I wonder what his c*** looks like”.
One blog posted a video of a man on the street with a child. Despite the child being partially pixelated, the caption reads: “Hot Daddy”, including the hashtags “Daddy, “Australia” and “Summer”.
In another, a man is captured from above sitting in a toilet stall using his smartphone.
“People are trading in images like baseball cards, there’s only so much freely available porn, and there’s a market for nonconsensual images, it's a turn on,” Nicola Henry, a senior lecturer in Legal Studies at La Trobe University, told news.com.au.
One of the blogs is the same blog where a Sydney man discovered his nude photographs had been published without his consent.
The man, known as Mr X, was alerted to the post by a Tinder user, who sent the man a message and told him he recognised his photos.
“I found out when someone I didn’t really know left a message on Tinder,” Mr X told news.com.au.
“They recognised one of the photos of me and brought it to my attention. They sent me a link and said to check it out.”
There are more unsuspecting victims on that particular blog.
“I felt pretty violated, objectified, it actually really emotionally affected me where I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone,” Mr X told news.com.au.
“I was paranoid about people’s intentions and generally withdrew myself from social contact because I felt ashamed and violated.”
Mr X’s images were stolen from a gay app known as Grindr.
Tumblr confirmed to news.com.au it had removed the post due to a “violation of our terms and service” but would not comment further on what the site was doing to fix the overwhelming amount of image abuse.
WHAT IS TUMBLR AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
Tumblr is a social networking blog site that can be used for various purposes, including picture blogs, essays — and porn.
Similar to other social sites, users can follow blogs and like and share content.
Users have little control over what appears on their feed, and porn has become an increasing concern for the social networking website, which has a whopping 329.6 million blogs and 144 billion posts.
Sex and its subcultures thrive on social platforms such as Tumblr, but other organisations, such as Flickr, Google and Reddit, have been able to squash most of its NSFW content by taking a tough stance on revenge porn and those responsible.
A 2016 report by the Data & Society Research Institute and the Center for Innovative Public Health Research found a staggering one in 25 Americans had had their nudes posted online, or had been threatened with exposure.
Meanwhile, an Italian study published last month, which looked at 130 million Tumblr users and seven billion links posted on the network, revealed porn filtered through to nearly half of Tumblr users, whether they wanted it to or not.
Yet despite just 0.1 per cent of users producing the content, 22 per cent of users followed, liked or shared that content. Due to those shares, a further 28.5 per cent of users are exposed to pornographic content. These users are referred to as the “unintentionally exposed”.
Both locally and globally, there are few options for victims who discover their images have been used without their consent.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
If you find your image online, the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN) is your first step.
ACORN boasts on its website it “allows you to securely report cybercrime incidents which may be in breach of Australian law”.
“This will help our law enforcement agencies to better combat the growing threat of cybercrime in Australia.”
But while ACORN acts as a reporting avenue it is not designed to assist urgent investigations.
As Mr X discovered: “I submitted a report and got an auto response saying they can’t guarantee a time frame or that they can’t do anything about it.
THE POLICE
When questioned about revenge porn, a NSW Police spokesperson told news.com.au: “If the image depicts a child (under the age of 18), it is deemed child abuse material, which is an offence to produce, possess and/or disseminate”.
“If the image depicts an adult, there are potential offences but the criminality generally revolves around the circumstances of how the image was produced (eg: hiding a video camera in a bathroom or bedroom and capturing those images without the consent of the victim).
“It can be difficult to investigate matters where adult victims are involved who have consensually sent naked images of themselves to others. Once these images are online or in someone else’s possession, it’s out of the control of the person in the photo — and the image can be used or shared by others.
“There are often difficulties in tracing possible offenders as many of the websites enable anonymous posting, and when the website is based overseas it can become problematic to have the images removed.
“The best advice is to think very carefully before you send naked pictures of yourself. Once you hit send, you lose control over the situation.
“Anyone who has had images of themselves posted or shared online without their consent is encouraged report it to police and, if possible, contact the site owner to have the image removed.”
— Have you experienced a nude pic nightmare? Share your story — youngma@news.com.au
— If you are a victim of revenge porn, Tumblr has confirmed the proper channel to report abuse can be found at tumblr.com/abuse/privacy.
— If you are a victim of revenge porn and are in need of support or advice, visit ACORN’s website.
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