The rise of revenge porn: could your intimate photos be splashed all over the internet?

The next time you send nudes, beware. They just might end up on one of the growing number of revenge porn sites in the UK

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It’s something thousands of people have done. By Snapchat, text or Whatsapp, sending intimate selfies to your other half seems like a great idea at the time.

Fast-forward to when the relationship has gone south. You’ve cheated, they’ve cheated, maybe you’ve just lost interest in each other. Most people can forget the photos ever existed, and hope their ex is decent enough to have swiftly deleted them.

But those less fortunate have found themselves at the mercy of their spurned exes, who have posted their compromising photos all over the internet.

Myex.com invites users to browse nude photos posted by aggrieved ex-partners

Complete with harsh comments about their appearance, personality, and how good they are in bed, many have found themselves victim of the online humiliation dubbed “revenge porn”.

The craze, which started in America and has since spread to the UK, allows spurned ex-lovers to post their exes naked photographs, and worse, real names, addresses and links to their social media, all over the internet.

A growing problem

One of the most popular sites for the sick trend is myex.com. The site boasts a staggering 52 pages of UK-based, mostly female exes, of which many are students. For many of the victims, links to their Facebook and personal information such as their job or university is included alongside the personal photos.

Heather Robinson has launched the Ban Revenge Porn campaign to tackle the issue

Myex.com was the site that first inspired Heather Robertson, a final year law student at York to set up the Ban Revenge Porn UK campaign. Her friend Alex (not her real name), a fellow student, was featured on the site without her consent.

Heather told The Tab: “We heard what was going around and pictures got posted to Facebook and from there ended up on some revenge porn websites. As a law student I said ‘oh I’ll have a look into it for you and see what we can do’ and it became very apparent that there’s absolutely nothing we could do.”

‘Extortion’

Myex.com does have a link to remove your photos if you’re unfortunate enough to be posted, but instead of solving the problem for victims of revenge porn, the “Remove photos” option instead links to a sinister payment page.

You can have your compromising photos removed from Myex.com, but only for the steep price of $400 by Western Union payment to South Africa. Sounds legit, doesn’t it? Heather Robertson called the underhand ploy to have your photos removed for cash nothing more than “extortion”.

In Alex’s case, the photos were removed, but not by paying up to myex.com and only after an agonising seven weeks of fighting. Even then, it’s not guaranteed that the ordeal will be over. Alex has had to face the humiliation of her photos being reposted on other sites since having them removed.

“Sadly the nature of the internet is that once it’s on there, it’s on there and it’s gonna keep creeping up so you just gotta keep an eye on it, keep trying to get it down”, Heather says.

The humiliation of being posted on a revenge porn site almost forced Alex to drop out of university. Heather told us while her friend never managed to get over the ordeal, she has tried to “plow through”.

And the number of UK students featured on Myex.com, which Heather names as the biggest offender, points to a worrying trend of revenge porn in university culture.

The Ban Revenge Porn UK campaign is currently working towards producing welfare packs to be handed out in universities to raise awareness of the dangers.

“It’s a very common age to get affected by revenge porn”, says Heather. “I think talking to our own welfare team at university, they don’t really know much about it as it’s such a new phenomenon.

“It’s been all the rage in America and now it’s becoming more and more prominent over here. Obviously at university level if it does happen it’s a lot more serious because it’s when you’re trying to look at going into work.”

Men feature on the site too, but it is dominated by photos of women

And it’s not just girls that are victims of revenge porn, (although they are the overwhelming majority, suggesting that guys are more likely to get revenge by posting their exes pictures and videos than women).

Attempting to explain the gender difference in revenge porn, Heather told The Tab: “It does happen to boys but interestingly they can get posted but the main heart of revenge porn comes from the users of the site, and they are largely men.

“So when other men get posted there might be a sort of vague interest of ‘oh haha you got posted’ but there’s not as much cyberstalking that goes on, and as much abuse and propostitions that you get in the messages. So they do get posted but as the users of the website cause the damage they don’t really pay much attention to it.”

‘Victim-blaming meets slut-shaming’

This abuse and amusement at those being posted on these sites is something that is easily found online. A quick look through Twitter, Facebook or the lewd comments under the photos of those posted reveals many believe that there is something inherently a bit funny about getting posted.

The mentality seems to be that if you’re stupid enough to send nudes, or to cheat, then you’re deserving of being humiliated by having the evidence posted online.

Heather argues vehemently against this. She says: “Well you can put yourself in a vulnerable situation but you’re not to blame when someone takes advantage of you in that vulnerable situation and it’s dangerously close to the ‘shouldn’t have worn a short skirt’ argument in cases of rape.

“I do find it quite hard to engage in that argument because to me it’s an absolute no brainer – I don’t know how anyone in a vulnerable situation can be blamed when someone takes advantage to them. It doesn’t take away from how bad it is and I actually find it quite baffling that people sick to that argument so vehemently.

“It’s basically victim blaming meets slut-shaming.”

Fighting back

Moving on from her fight for Alex, Heather Robertson now aims to take the Ban Revenge Porn UK campaign to PM David Cameron.

With strides being taken against revenge porn in America and legislation introduced to protect American victims, it seems only right that the UK should follow suit. Currently standing at 2,839 signatures, the campaign needs 100,000 to get to 10 Downing Street, but Heather remains confident that they will make it.

The 100,000 reasons why section of the Ban Revenge Porn UK website

“We’re in it for the long haul” she says.

When we attempted to contact well-known revenge porn site Myex.com, their ‘contact us’ link led to another sinister and useless page. Their FAQ openly promises to ignore any emails that don’t include a “copyright registration number”.

In fact the only open contact form the site allows is for law enforcement, and only where those posted are underaged.

Their page says: “Posters or posted individuals should not use this contact form to contact us. Your emails will go unanswered. If you are a victim that was underage at the time you had naked pictures of you taken contact your local law enforcement agency & report the person who you gave the photos to.”

If you have been affected by revenge porn, or want to help out with Heather’s campaign, you can visit the campaign website here. You can also tell us your story, email [email protected]