Facebook trying to tackle revenge porn

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Olivia Storey

Facebook are piloting an attempt to crack down on ‘revenge porn’ in Australia, hashing images to prevent malicious uploading of intimate images without their consent.

The pilot is hoping to tackle attempts of uploading private, intimate, nude or sexual images as a means of revenge, giving some control back to victims of this type of abuse.

Revenge porn is described by the UK government as the “distribution of a private sexual image of someone without their consent with the intention of causing distress”.

UK law was changed in 2014 in order to address and punish individuals who post images of this nature, and it covers images online and offline and carries a prison sentence of maximum 2 years.

A report from the Data & Society Research Institute states that in 2016 roughly 4% of US internet users, which is 1 in 25 online Americans, have been victims of revenge porn. This is a large percentage of internet users, and this percentage rises to 10% when concerning women under 30.

Facebook will ‘hash’ the images, which will convert them into a digital fingerprint, and then use that ‘fingerprint’ to recognise, identify and block the image from being posted or re-uploaded.

The company are asking concerned users to send them their nude or sexually explicit photos in order for them to be hashed, although, before any images are sent, users must first fill in an online e-safety form to outline their concerns.

The e-safety commissioner’s office receives these submissions, notifies Facebook, and then a community operations analyst will access the image and hash it.

The images are stored for a short period before being deleted; making sure the policy is enforced correctly.

Facebook are aiming to take action on the ‘image-based abuse’ before pictures are posted to Facebook, Instagram or Messenger.  

Mark James, ESET It Security Specialist, discusses the security of sending intimate photos to Facebook.

“I see the need to protect people from ‘revenge porn’ but my worry about sending all your nude pictures to Facebook, or indeed any authority, is that it could be abused by spammers or attackers.

“The likelihood of Facebook being compromised is slim of course, but if the user was tricked into sending them to a third party thinking it’s somewhere else that could open them up for further abuse and scams.

“We always encourage people to be very careful about where they store intimate photos and preferably to not store them online in any form.”

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