{"id":1923,"date":"2018-05-08T17:33:07","date_gmt":"2018-05-08T22:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2018-05-09T12:52:45","modified_gmt":"2018-05-09T17:52:45","slug":"revenge-porn-the-open-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/2018\/05\/08\/revenge-porn-the-open-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"Revenge Porn: The Open Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

Revenge Porn: The Open Secret<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The town of Lake Forest is like any other town in the North Shore. Nothing eventful happens on a daily basis, good or bad. But in March 2017, a letter was sent to everyone in the community from the local high school. It wasn\u2019t just sent to alumni, parents of alumni, and current students, it was sent to everyone in town. It was just a precaution but nonetheless it was disturbing.<\/p>\n

A website had been brought to the attention of the school board. According to the letter, the site contained numerous explicit images of women and underage girls from high schools all over the Chicago area. For privacy purposes, they refused to disclose the name of the site. As it turns out, they didn\u2019t need to. The following week, NBC Chicago published a story about the site because several Chicago-area high schools had forums. As it turns out, it was much worse than that.<\/p>\n

The site was called \u201cAnon-IB,\u201d short for \u201canonymous image board,\u201d and it wasn\u2019t exclusive to Chicago. There was a category specifically for Illinois, and there were forums for Illinois high schools, towns, area codes, even employees of specific businesses. Sure enough, Lake Forest High School had its own forum. Fortunately, there weren\u2019t any pictures posted to it. There were requests by anonymous users for recent graduates but nobody had actually posted any images. There were no usernames to go on, and all posters came up with their own names each time they commented. The school had sent out a letter as a precaution to notify parents.<\/p>\n

Although no one in Lake Forest was on the website, the feeling of relief may be short-lived. The forum was still active. The website had been listed by name on the news. Someone could very easily check out the site themselves and post whatever they wanted.<\/p>\n

There were categories for each individual state and a handful of countries, but also different types of women. One was labelled \u201cDrunken Chicks.\u201d Another was called \u201cPeeping Toms.\u201d One category was labeled \u201cCollege Bitches.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bradley University had its own forum.<\/p>\n

There were explicit pictures of two different Bradley women online.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not legal in Illinois to post these kinds of pictures. According to a lawyer with the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, \u201cnon-consensual posting of private sexual images are a class 4 felony, and punishable with one to three years in prison.\u201d Although commonly referred to as \u201crevenge porn,\u201d a more appropriate title would be \u201cnon-consensual porn,\u201d<\/p>\n

A quick scan showed that the entire Anon-IB community was toxic. There weren\u2019t any usernames to each post as they don\u2019t require registrations or accounts. On the surface, every post was anonymous. The pictures were referred to as \u201cwins.\u201d There were several people who were asking to trade pictures. Others said they would only post when others posted what they had. No full names were used, only a first name, a last initial, and the graduating class, possibly to avoid coming up in any Google searches. In some cases, the women who found themselves on the site responded.<\/p>\n

\u201cYOU FUCKERS BETTER TAKE THESE DOWN I MADE THE MISTAKE OF TRUSTING SOMEONE A LONG TIME AGO IT\u2019S NOT SOMETHING I\u2019LL DO AGAIN TAKE THESE DOWN NOW,\u201d one said, before it goes into graphic detail.<\/p>\n

Women were commonly referred to as sluts and commenters frequently bragged about how easy they were prior to obtaining pictures. They appeared to show no remorse for what they posted.<\/p>\n

In April 2018, a little over a year after the letter was sent out to Lake Forest residents, Dutch police raided the Anon-IB servers. The website had been under investigation for a year after the owners of the site had allegedly hacked into iCloud accounts and stole photos from phones and computers to post online. As it turns out, the actual posting of the photos wasn\u2019t what got them into trouble, it was the hacking.<\/p>\n

Even a year later, the Bradley forum was still there. It was a new forum after the old one had apparently expired after not receiving a number of replies. It was about a month old, There were a handful of explicit pictures of Bradley students. There were also non-explicit pictures posted to go along with requests.<\/p>\n

What made Anon-IB so dangerous was that it was organized by location. Although most of the women posted didn\u2019t have a last name to go along with it, it was easy to narrow it down when a school or town goes along with it. Bradley wasn\u2019t the only college listed. There were numerous colleges all across the country with forums. Bradley has between five and six thousand undergrad students and there were 20 replies. The larger universities had hundreds of replies dating back since 2014. For example, Florida State University had 220 replies since early 2016. Roughly 90 of those replies contained images of either requests or porn. Judging by how long these images were online before Anon-IB was taken down, it can be assumed a majority of these women didn\u2019t know their pictures were online.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, this problem is bigger than most people think.<\/p>\n

The organization known as Battle Against Demeaning and Abusive Selfie Sharing (BADASS) works to help victims and get photos off the internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have helped about 1000 people so far,\u201d said a spokesperson for BADASS. \u201cI\u2019d say about 25% are underage in which case we always advocate getting the police involved.<\/p>\n

BADASS was founded in August, 2017. They\u2019ve only been around for nine months.<\/p>\n

A few city-focused outlets reported on the site and a handful of petitions had been started demanding that the site be taken down on the grounds of child porn. This website had forums for every state, numerous countries, and various categories for different people. It wasn\u2019t until the site was finally shut down by Dutch police that many technology outlets began reporting on it. Yet Anon-IB had been allowed to run since at least 2013. It wasn\u2019t until 2017 that an official investigation began after a woman claimed she had photos stolen from her account and posted online. She wasn\u2019t the only one.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, although the servers were based in the Netherlands, nonconsensual porn isn\u2019t against federal law in the United States.<\/p>\n

Lieutenant Savage of the Bradley Police weighed in on his experience with these cases. Despite the number of Bradley students on Anon-IB, he\u2019s only dealt with one case in the 2017-2018 school year of someone threatening to post their ex\u2019s explicit pictures online. It also wasn\u2019t a specific website, it was an Instagram account.<\/p>\n

\u201cA majority of the cases I worked with were at my previous employer down in Alabama where I was a sheriff\u2019s deputy for seven years. That\u2019s where a majority of my experience with those kinds of cases come from,\u201d Savage recounted. He also said that he never heard of Anon-IB before it was shut down.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith these cases, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve encountered one that didn\u2019t warrant an investigation. A lot of times what you see is cooperation. Unfortunately, a lot of these suspects don\u2019t believe they did anything wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n