Sex offences online: Revenge Porn and Sextortion . By Diego Migliorisi
Sex offences online: Revenge Porn and Sextortion
These online crimes have increased a lot worldwide in recent years. Most of them are not reported either out of fear or embarrassment.
But what is the difference between sextortion and revange porn ?
In the sextorsion the objective is economic. That is to say, the criminal that has in his power private photos or videos of the victim, threats him/her to publish them unless they are paid .
In revange porn, the objective of the criminal is not economic. His target is just to cause damage to the victim uploading private videos and photos on the web to affect the victim s online reputation.
In most of the cases the material is produced with the consent of the victim and in this way the offender has the material he needs to divulge on the web .
The porn revange cases are very common among couples who shoot or take private photos and when they separate in bad terms , one of them uploads those pictures for the sake of revange.
In the majority of the cases, the criminals are “disgusted ex-marital partner” who only seek to hurt the victim by uploading the material to the web for its viralization, but there can also be third parties that access to the material illegally.
It is important to emphasize that the damage caused to the victim is for good because the private content will be always visible on the web .
For example , If the crime was committed when the victim was young, this will accompany him throughout his life and all the information that is uploaded, it is impossible to eliminate completely.
While you can request de-indexing or blocking a link with such content, there are millions of people who navigate through cyberspace and can therefore republish the material elsewhere (even if they have no connection with the victim) or even the same author can do so.
Consequently , when the victims ask me how they can be protected from this type of situation, I reply that the only way to avoid being a victim is to avoid these practices because one does not know what may happen in the future.
But how does the criminal get to take possession of the material? . He can access in three different ways:
- The most common one is when, in a consensual way, the victim and the criminal to be produce the material that one of them will publish later on.
- Another typical practice is when a third party illegally access to a computer or mobile phone and subtracts the information.
- Third and last practice is when the individuals who propose to practise Sexting on line (through the webcam), ask for money so as not to upload the images. However, when the victim refuses to pay, those pictures are published as a sign of revange
- It is worth mentioning that there are international criminal organizations dedicated exclusively to the Sextorsion.
Education is the basis of every society both to grow and to prevent unfortunate events such as those discussed in this article.