If your nude photos are posted online without your permission, Microsoft and Google want to know.
For years, most victims of revenge porn — people who have had their nude photos shared online without permission — basically couldn’t do anything about it.
According to one study, over 50% of all adults engage in sexting, and 70% admit to having received a nude photo online or over the phone.
And yet, despite the fact that we all (or at least more than half of us) do it, there’s still this weird, persistent, harmful notion that if your naked pictures get leaked or shared maliciously by an ex online, it’s your fault for taking them in the first place.
It’s completely backward, but sadly, the law seems to at least kind of agree.
As of September 2014, New Republic found, putting someone else’s illicit photos online without their consent was illegal in just 16 states, though laws have been proposed in more states. Not only is it typically impossible to prosecute the perpetrator, they note, it’s impossible to legally compel websites to take the images taken down most of the time.
Here’s how to
report a non-consensual image posting on Bing.
And here’s how to
do it on Google.
Boost!
Here’s another way to fight back from your friendly neighborhood law student! If you took these pictures yourself, you owe the copyrights to these pictures so in addition to taking down the pictures you can smack them with a lawsuit not only for intentional infliction of emotional distress BUT ALSO copyright infringement so he has to pay you anywhere from $750-$10,000 per photo posted, x5 damages if there’s willfulness/malice (which there always is). Bleed those creeps dry.
I wish I knew this when someone posted mine online
Super Important PSA
If you are going to share nude pics with someone, let me suggest a few preventative measures too.
1. Only share them with someone you trust – sure this can go wrong, but it’s a good starting point. Never send pictures to someone you’re not sure who they even are – there are millions of picture collectors out there who just want a cheap thrill of getting photos out of you – don’t have anything to do with them unless you get off on it too and don’t care if anyone sees.
2. Make them as anonymous as you can at first – avoid your head (or tattoos or birthmarks) in the same shot, try not to include too much of your room etc that could also be used to identify you.
3 If they want more, go for some ‘mutually assured destruction’ photos – get them to send you shots of them too, faces in it, naked, and if you’re really not sure, with some embarrassing body writing just to seal the deal (and to know it’s really them!). If you have pictures of them with ‘I fap to Sailor Moon’ written on their tummy you can be pretty sure they are going to think very hard about passing on your pictures either.
But given all that, people are idiots and may well share what you send them if things go wrong. And you know what, if they do, sure flag it with Google etc as suggested, but on the whole, however hard it might seem, fuck ‘em. You are beautiful, it’s your naked body, nothing to be ashamed of. You were dumb to give them away but they are the fucking assholes who need to be ashamed. Decide to not care, to move on, millions of us have done it, it’s so common now, it’s really not a big deal, things are going to be okay. Your real friends will still be your real friends, your family will still love you, and you are beautiful anyway and this just proves it.
Very good advice on sexting and picture sharing here:
https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/bullying-abuse-safety/online-mobile-safety/sexting/#2
It has ALL the major social media reporting pages and advice on other stuff like if you’re being blackmailed or groomed. They even have an app called Zipit that gives you memes to send back to unwanted sext requests.