Women finding intimate pictures on public website

Travis Danner

Editor in Chief

When she found out, her reaction was immediate.

“When he told me, my heart dropped,” she said.

“Cassandra”, as she’ll be known in this story as she did not want to be identified, was informed by her boyfriend who had heard a tip from a random person.

There they were, her bare buttocks on the computer screen, part of a set of photographs she had taken with an ex-boyfriend that were never meant to be seen by anyone.

They’d been posted on anonib.com.

Anonib, short for “anonymous image board,” is a site where men anonymously post nude photographs of women without the consent of the person photographed. Many of the photos are extremely private in nature and often are accompanied by the first name and last initial of the women in the photographs.

A large number of women in the Livermore, Dublin, Pleasanton and surrounding communities are having photos of themselves posted. Given the volume of women on the site, it’s safe to say that anyone who’s taken nude, digital photographs of themselves is at risk of having their photos exposed against their will.

Women who’ve had it happen have had to change their names, jobs and face the consequences of their most private photos going viral.

And guess what, in many cases, it’s currently legal to post such photographs in that manner

The practice of non-consensual pornography is often referred to as “revenge porn,” because in many cases it is, according to msn.com, “the act of posting sexually explicit photos or videos of a former lover online.”

In the case of anonib.com, the situation appears to be more complicated than that.

The fact that photos are being posted anonymously means that currently, no one knows precisely how the photos are being acquired or who is posting them.

They could have been stolen, they could have been traded between people or it could be as simple as an jilted ex putting photos up out of spite.

“That’s what really bums me out,” Cassandra said, “now I’m questioning all of my friends. That sucks. It sucks that I’m thinking that way but I can’t help it.”

There is a level of familiarity in the comments and postings that suggest strongly the individuals who post on the site are members of the community. Often times, along with the posting of photos, posters request photos of specific women in the community.

“Anyone got win of these other 2 girls?” one poster asks with corresponding clothed pictures of the local women in question.

A “win,” in the vernacular used by posters on the site, is a way of referring to nude photographs.

Occasionally, those requests are granted.

When one logs on to the site, all they have to do is enter “Livermore” as a search to see the scope of how many young women are on the site.

The viewer will first find a thread titled “more Livermore sluts.”

The site is still adding pictures to its already large collection.

“I’ve looked at the site so many times,” Cassandra said, “and every time I’d see someone else that I knew, it was like ‘oh great, that’s my friends little sister.’”

There is speculation that some photos are stolen from Photobucket accounts but that, according to Cassandra, is not what happened in her case. Her photos were never on Photobucket nor were the photos of other people she knows who are on the site.

The legality of the activity on anonib.com is murky. Most states do not have laws for online invasion of privacy.

According an article titled “How to Fight Revenge Porn,” published in The Atlantic, “plaintiffs… are told that offending websites receive broad immunity, that’s it’s hard to identify the individual wrongdoers and that once your explicit photo is shared with others, it is no longer ‘private.’”

Websites that host such materials receive immunity thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, according arstechnica.com.

Anonib is also hosted in the Netherlands, further complicating tracking down those responsible for its content.

The article in the Atlantic also describes the “Streisand Effect” which “discourages many would be plaintiffs from filing a lawsuit out of fear of bringing even more unwanted attention to themselves.”

Cassandra echoed this point, even if it wasn’t so much concern for herself.

“It’s not even necessarily myself I’m worried about,” she said, “it’s everybody else. I’m more uncomfortable for them. You don’t want to bring too much attention to it.”

Las Positas College’s Campus Safety and Security Department Supervisor Sean Prather was previously unaware of the site and was hesitant to comment directly without having seen it.

“I’m at a loss,” Prather said.

He did suggest one possible course of action, contacting Livermore Police Department, specifically to inquire if they have a cyber crimes division.

When asked what his advice was to those who found that their compromising photos were online without their permission, he offered this suggestion.

“I’m big into being preventative,” Prather said, “don’t let people take pictures of you in a compromising position.”

He added that taking a picture of that nature was “a risk,” and that “not every person who has his or her pictures put online is at fault. They’re not.”

Jin Tsubota, a Mass Communications and Visual Communications professor at LPC as well a technological guru claimed that it is possible to steal photos from a cell phone or email account but was unsure how that would be accomplished.

In an e-mail, he stressed some steps that people can take to protect themselves from having their personal data from being stolen.

“Use different passwords of increasing complexity for varying online accounts,” Tsubota said. “For example, I have three passwords that I always use for my online accounts. The most complex password is used for all of my financial accounts. The next tier password is used for email and social networks. The third password is used for all the other online accounts that I have. The rationale is that if one of my online accounts gets hacked, the password can not be used to access my most sensitive online information.”

He also suggested clearing web history and cookies, deleting all private or embarrassing photos or information, controlling what is shared on social media sites and creating what he called “alphanumeric passwords.”

“The easiest way to create a complex password is to turn a favorite phrase into an acronym,” Tsubota said. “For example, ‘The grass is always greener on the other side.’ This can be rewritten as ‘TGIAGOTOS.’ Then numbers and symbols can be used to replace the letters. Lowercase letters can also be used, Tg!4g0t05.”

In the meantime, people are waking up to the problem and beginning to take action against sites like anonib.

Florida congressman Tom Goodson, R-Titusville, has sponsored House Bill 787, titled “Computer or Electronic Device Harassment,” which would make posting nude photos of someone without their permission a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in jail. it would move to second-degree with a 10-year sentence if the victim is 16 or under and the perpetrator is over 18.

This month, California state senator Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres, proposed a state law that would make the act a misdemeanor with a $1,000 fine if the pictures contain nudity, there is no consent to post the images and there is intent to harass or intimidate.

“I think a lot of people are embarrassed,” Cannella said in an interview with the Central Coast News. “They don’t want to talk about it. They’re horrified that these images are out there. They don’t know what to do, so I think a lot of people suffer in silence.”

Some victims have also begun to fight back.

29-year-old Floridian Holly Jacobs (not her birth name, which she had to change after having images of herself posted online) became the first person to sue her ex after he posted explicit photo and video of her online, alleging invasion of privacy.

She claimed she shared the videos because it helped their relationship, undercutting the claim by some that having nude photographs of one’s self is always an irresponsible act.

“We shared photos to keep the intimacy alive,” Jacobs said in an interview with the New York Daily News. “I completely trusted him with the material.”

There are various advocacy groups such as Endrevengeporn.com, founded by Jacobs, and petitions, such as one titled “United States Federal Bureau of Investigation: Shut Down AnonIB.com on the Grounds of Child Porn and Endangerment Women” which are committed to criminalizing the act of posting explicit photos without someone’s permission.

In the meantime, many victims can merely wait it out and hope something changes.

“I kind of just tried to forget about it after while,” Cassandra said “but just the other day one of my boyfriend’s friends came up to him at school and told him about it. I don’t want that to have to happen, to have people coming up to him and trying to tell him about it. Really, I just really want to find these assholes who did it.”