Sex offences online: Revenge Porn and Sextortion – By Diego Migliorisi

Sex offences online: Revenge Porn  and Sextortion

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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 revenge porn ?

In the sextortion 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 revenge 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  revenge  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.

publicacion ilegitima de imagenes

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 revenge
• It is worth mentioning that there are international criminal organizations dedicated exclusively to the Sextortion.

Education is the basis of every society both to grow and to prevent unfortunate events such as those discussed in this article.