Felony charge filed in ‘revenge porn’ arrest

  Discord’s somewhat recent policy regarding not safe for work (NSFW) content, which often includes pornographic images or cartoons, has some gaming communities concerned about future sudden changes. Recent controversy sprung up after one popular, partnered Discord server dedicated to Final Fantasy XIV was issued a warning for an NSFW channel and lost its partner status as a result. Server members were reportedly sharing lolicon, a specific type of cartoon subgenre that depicts young girls participating in erotic acts or lewd behavior, and received a warning from Discord administrators. The email, which was uploaded to Reddit by user Eanae, instructed the Final Fantasy XIV server admins to remove the channel, as it violated the company’s terms of service for sharing digitally altered pornography that depicts minors. The server would be deleted otherwise. Eanae said they took action, but Discord refused to give them back their partner status. Partner status helps…

  Last November, Australian media reported that Facebook was experimenting with a novel idea to combat revenge porn on its platforms. In a pilot program done in cooperation with the government, users would do something that feels ill advised: upload a nude image to Facebook. The idea was that by doing so, Facebook could preempt that specific image from being uploaded to the platform by someone else in the future through technology that can help identify duplicates. The program sparked backlash among Facebook observers and internet users. One cybersecurity expert told Quartz at the time that it was a “horrible idea,” questioning the wisdom of giving such sensitive information to a third party—a sentiment hard to shake after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed just how unsafe user data was on Facebook. Despite the criticism, on May 22, Facebook announced that it was expanding the tests to the US, UK,…

Lisa M. can’t walk around her hometown without wondering who has seen her naked. The 28-year-old from Gardner, Mass., was only 17 when her then-boyfriend snapped a couple of topless photos of her when she wasn’t looking. She loved him, trusted him and had no idea he even owned a camera. Years later, the pictures would surface online and spread all over her tiny hometown. “To see those online was just like a total betrayal of trust, and on top of that, there’s nothing you can do about it — it’s just there, and you can’t take it down, and you don’t know who’s seen it,” she said. The pictures had been posted to the Web site “Anon-IB,” a k a Anonymous Image Board, one of the world’s main online promoters of revenge porn — intimate photos that are uploaded typically by a former sex partner and without the subject’s consent. Anon-IB…

Speaking out anonymously through the youth engagement tool U-Report, almost three-quarters of young people also said social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, are the most common place for online bullying. “Connected classrooms mean school no longer ends once a student leaves class, and, unfortunately, neither does schoolyard bullying”, said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “Improving young people’s education experience means accounting for the environment they encounter online as well as offline.” Via SMS and instant messaging, young people were asked a series of questions about their experiences of online bullying and violence, including who they thought should be trying to end it. Some 32 per cent of those polled believed governments should end cyberbullying, 31 per cent put the onus on young people themselves to stop the harassment and 29 per cent cited internet companies as bearing the chief responsibility. “One of the key messages that we can clearly see from…

“Sextortion” is the fastest growing crime against children on the Internet, according to the FBI. But no official records are kept, and only five states have made sextortion, where a perpetrator threatens victims with releasing explicit images unless they perform pornography on demand, a standalone crime. Prosecutors say if we don’t start actively telling kids—with some victims as young as seven years old—that sextortion could happen to anyone (even those who have never shared a single intimate image), the problem is only going to get worse. Although the FBI does not yet officially track instances of sextortion, the currently available data indicates that the problem is expanding. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children founda 150 percent rise in reports of sextortion to its CyberTipline between 2014 and 2016. The stories are horrifying. A little girl who is threatened that her dog will be killed if she doesn’t send…

  Facebook is expanding its fight against revenge porn with a pilot program that asks users to send their naked photos so Facebook can block the photos before someone else shares them. Facebook’s been testing the system in Australia and is extending the trial to the U.S., Britain and Canada, BBC News reports. In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Facebook’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis said the company was updating its pilot program targeting the non-consensual sharing of images on the platform. Rather than having to report an image after it’s already been shared around Facebook (the company already has a system in place for reporting and removing those images), Facebook will let users upload an image before it’s been seen by others, CNET reports. Facebook users worried about intimate images being shared on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger can contact their relevant local organization and submit a form. Facebook’s Global Head of Safety…

  Google has always allowed people to request certain content, like a malicious website or copies of your contact information, to be removed from search results. The company already had a policy for removing private images or videos, but now it’s taking fake pornographic content more seriously. Google now has a support page dedicated to removing “involuntary fake pornography,” with instructions that people can follow to report said content. For a request to be accepted, the person reporting the content has to be the person depicted in the fake imagery. The company notes that this process only removes the requested content from Google search results, not from the sites actually hosting it. This updated policy is likely in response to the growing popularity of ‘deepfakes’ - sexual videos and images where someone’s face is substituted for another person’s (usually a celebrity). As the name might suggest, deepfakes are generated using…

  PORTLAND, Ore. (PRWEB) September 25, 2021 October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and Learning.com has launched a cyberbullying prevention campaign to stand in solidarity with students against cyberbullying. With national data reports showing cyberbullying on the rise, especially in public schools, the digital literacy leader has created a cyberbullying prevention toolkit for educators to download and help students and parents do their part in promoting online safety and good digital citizen skills. To download a complimentary toolkit, visit https://lrng.co/2ChQDIf Learning.com’s special toolkit offers digital materials that help bridge the gap between school and home to help keep students safe online. Resources in the kit are K-8 age-appropriate and include online safety lesson plans, a home and school checklist, a cyberbullying prevention guide, a classroom student pledge poster, Be Kind Online stickers, and a shareable infographic to help teachers, students, and parents do their part in preventing cyberbullying. “It has…

A California middle school music teacher was arrested on Friday on the suspicion of having a three-year-long sexual relationship with a student and then blackmailing the victim with nude photographs, authorities said. Samuel Neipp, 34, started the relationship while the middle school student was 13 and it continued for three years, police said. Authorities found out about the alleged relationship after Neipp allegedly threatened to post nude photos of the victim. The alleged threat prompted an investigation by San Jose Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children and Child Exploitation Detail. It is unclear whether the student or someone else reported Neipp to authorities. “Neipp used his position of authority to exploit the victim into a sexual relationship,” a statement issued by the police said. Neipp was detained on Friday and is being held in Santa Clara County Jail without bail on suspicion of sexual acts with a minor under 14,…

  William Morris Whatley II (Source: Tallapoosa County Sheriff’s Office) TALLAPOOSA COUNTY, AL (WSFA) - An Alexander City man is behind bars after he was arrested in what police call a “revenge porn” case. Alexander City Police Department officers arrested William Morris Whatley II, 30, June 12. Alex City Police Chief Jay Turner said this all stemmed from a domestic violence situation. Police reports show the victim filed a petition for a Protection from Abuse order on May 30 against Whatley, her ex-boyfriend. Subsequently Whatley was charged with third-degree domestic violence charges. Court documents indicate the victim was meeting with an officer about the domestic violence case when she received a message from a friend showing a sexually explicit video. That’s when the victim was advised to see another officer and file an additional report for a “Revenge Porn” charge. The victim and Whatley went before a judge related to the protection from…

  Ongoing concerns that the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association, with its intimate understanding of boarding school pressures, was left off the Queensland Anti-Cyberbullying Taskforce, continued to be voiced strongly at the recent state conference in Winton. These were originally raised by ICPA’s state council in the wake of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s announcement of the taskforce in February, saying at the time that ICPA’s omission from the 14-member taskforce was short-sighted and made no sense. Charleville Branch of the Air representative, Deirdre Williams, offered the strongest possible support motions from various branches that ICPA Queensland continue to provide their voice to the taskforce. “A lot of our children go away to school at the age of 12, and they all respond in different ways,” she said. Students, including these from the Longreach School of Distance Education, were a constant feature of conference presentations. The motion’s explanation noted that if ICPA Queensland couldn’t…

  Nurses are struggling with cyberbullying by patients and families, a new study has found. Massey University PhD graduate Dr Natalia D’Souza wrote her thesis on workplace cyberbullying and found that nurses are not only bullied by other staff, but also by patients and their families. Dr D’Souza says patient care responsibilities make it difficult for nurses to block communication if they are being bullied by electronic channels. “I was told about one case where a nurse was being bullied by a patient’s mother, and she used her son to gain access. “She would call to ask for help for her son, but then start abusing the nurse, so the nurse was hesitant to block the calls in case it was a genuine emergency.” Many nurses were also concerned about how being cyberbullied on social media would affect their professional reputation. “Sometimes their personal contact details have been posted online,…

A growing number of teenage girls are being approached online by fake model recruiters who lure them into sending indecent images of themselves, which are later used to extort money. Facebook and Instagram accounts are being set up in the names of leading model agencies such as Storm Model Management, which discovered Kate Moss and represents Cindy Crawford. Girls receive messages from someone who claims to be recruiting for the agency; they are encouraged to send topless photos or conduct a Skype interview in which they are asked to remove their clothes or wear lingerie. Sarah Doukas, the managing director of Storm, said that in the past two years the number of calls the agency had received about scam agents had risen from one a week to almost daily messages. “The rise of social media has impacted greatly on why modelling agency scams are increasing,” Doukas said. “Firstly, a lot…

Getty Images Taking a photo for commercial purposes is a different thing - as it is if you’ve purchased a ticket to a concert have to abide by their terms - however legally, nobody can claim copyright to their own image. “So long as you are on public property you can publish the photo,” says Stacks law firm. “But if you publish a photo taken by someone else you run into copyright issues. Get permission to use it.” However, lawyer Geoff Baldwin says if someone has a voyeuristic purpose, which can generally be thought of as capturing images of private activities for your own or someone else’s sexual gratification, it is likely to be an offence under the Crimes Act 1900 [NSW]. The distribution of ‘intimate images’ - like revenge porn - can also be an offence under the same Act. Under Australian law, it is also an offence in…

WASHINGTON — How cautious are you online? Scammers attempt to get money, goods or services out of unsuspecting people — and military members are often targets. Here are some scams that have affected service members, Defense Department employees and their families. Romance scams In April, Army Criminal Investigation Command put out a warning about romance scams in which online predators go on dating sites claiming to be deployed active-duty soldiers. It’s a problem that’s affecting all branches of service — not just the Army. CID said there have been hundreds of claims each month from people who said they’ve been scammed on legitimate dating apps and social media sites. According to the alleged victims, the scammers have asked for money for fake service-related needs such as transportation, communications fees, processing and medical fees — even marriage. CID said many of the victims have lost tens of thousands of dollars and likely will…