Online undercover investigators | boyfriend posted her private photos into a pornographic chat room

Source: The Paper

In the chat room, someone posted a photo of a girl. The lifestyle photo reached thousands of mobile phone users through the internet, and the message area began to pour into unsightly comments.

This is the interaction that happens every day in a chat room. Here, unsuspecting women are wantonly insulted by the members of the group and dubbed with all kinds of sexual insults... Members were encouraged to share pictures and insulted each other; some users uploaded photos claiming to be their "wives", "girlfriends", and "women around them"; others said that they "contributed" "roommates", "colleagues", and "relatives". At most, tens of thousands of people in a chat room are online at the same time.

Similar chat rooms are constantly producing new victims. Some women were diagnosed with severe stress disorder by doctors after they learned about it, and in the most difficult times, they had nightmares and kept flashing their appearance of being molested by tens of thousands of chat room members, "What should I do in my future life?" ”

Some victims choose to take the initiative to contact the administrator in the chat room to request the deletion of information; there are also victims who stand up and choose to call the police, with the help of the power of the law, to protect their rights and interests. However, even if their rights protection is successful, their psychological shadow still exists for a long time. How do you get out of the haze and rebuild your personal life?

Recently, the surging news (www.thepaper.cn) undercover multiple pornographic chat room investigation found that pornographic chat rooms for young women's photos of obscenity, insults have formed an industrial chain. Some pornography groups have a clear division of labor, some users specifically upload women's photos, names, ages, occupations, schools, and even id card numbers and other personal information in the group, and some users specially write articles to humiliate women's photos with insulting words. With these chat rooms, each member can create their own separate room, some of which are paid to enter.

In an interview with The Paper, a number of lawyers said that the processing and forwarding of women's photos in the chat room was obviously an act of violating the woman's portrait rights. When women encounter such situations, it is recommended that they can actively take up legal weapons and safeguard their legitimate rights and interests from civil claims, criminal reports and other channels.

vocalization

After receiving a plea for help from his friend, Zhao Zhuo decided to write down the victim's experience.

On December 27, 2021, an article titled "The murderer who personally sent me to Room N is a 6-year friend of 985 University" was published on Zhao Zhuo's WeChat public account. In the article, Zhao Zhuo recounted how his friend's photos were uploaded to a telegram group called "Staring" with more than 7,000 people. "More than 400 photos of my friend, more than 700 messages about her. My friend asked me to send it out for the same reason that he didn't want more girls to suffer. ”

To write this article, Zhao Zhuo lurked into four or five telegram groups with more than 7,000 active users.

Telegram group refers to the chat room in the cross-platform instant messaging software Telegram. In chat rooms, users can freely exchange encrypted and self-destruct messages with each other, send photos, videos, and other types of files. In these chat rooms, the pictures of the women were arbitrarily humiliated by the group of friends, and some of them claimed that the photos were their girlfriends and the women around them, for them to watch and fornicate. There are also male users in the group who upload videos and pictures of their reproductive organs at will. After entering, Zhao Zhuo's first reaction was "particularly disgusting." Some of the pictures aroused Zhao Zhuo's strong physical and emotional disgust.

"After staying for a long time, I don't think these people belong to the category of normal people." A kind of instinctive care for women drives Zhao Zhuo to continue to pay attention to the female victims who are secretly photographed and watched. After the first article was issued, in a short period of time, Zhao Zhuo's WeChat public platform had thousands of WeChat messages. Xia Yang, a female reader, confided in Zhao Zhuo about her isolation and helplessness, "Every day is like drowning, I can't breathe at all, and my struggle is useless."

In Zhao Zhuo's observation, more than half of the victims who contacted her from the background were committed by their boyfriends, who invariably refused the other party's request to take private photos, but they also failed to avoid being secretly photographed. Chen Can never thought that the person who uploaded his private photos to the telegram group was actually his ex-boyfriend.

In November 2020, Chen Received a private message from a netizen saying that her intimate photos had been uploaded to Twitter. In the link sent by netizens, Chen Can entered a chat room with 280,000 online users.

In the chat room, users unscrupulously shared private photos of their so-called girlfriends, accompanied by various insulting words, which made Chen Can feel "shocking". Chen Can roughly estimated, "At least one-third of the photos of girls sent out every day are secretly taken. ”

In the chat record of the chat room, Chen Can flipped through his nude photos. Browsing history told her that there were probably tens of thousands of people browsing her intimate photos. "I can't imagine that maybe one of my classmates around me has seen my picture behind my back."

Chen Can couldn't describe his mood at that time, only remembering that his hands were shaking all the time. She sent a message to question her ex-boyfriend, who admitted it. Chen Can chose to call the police, and the ex-boyfriend was "very scared, but did not feel much guilt."

"The police didn't give me feedback on the case." Chen Can said that after the police failed, the ex-boyfriend still did not stop uploading photos, "I later found out that they uploaded their own recorded pornographic videos in the telegram group." ”

In the months since, Chen Can has worried that in real life, he will also be stared at and accused by men all the time. She often had nightmares, nervousness, uncontrollable emotions, and was eventually diagnosed by the hospital with severe stress disorder and needed hospitalization.

Covert damage and trades

Wang Lan (pseudonym) first noticed that some women's pictures were maliciously disseminated, when browsing the web, he found that someone in Tieba left a message on the female photo, "These are some insulting words." At the beginning of 2021, because he could not accept the words under a certain photo, "a look is a rumor", Wang Lan could not help but argue with people in the message area, but was ridiculed by others.

He decided to stop this behavior. Wang Lan noticed that some of the photos had social account watermarks in the corners. Through the watermark, he found the social account of the girl in the photo, and the private message reminded her that the photo had been stolen. Encouraging him, the girl went to the police, and the person who stole the pictures ended up in detention. In the same way, in less than a year, he reminded sixty or seventy girls. Wang Lan estimated that about two-thirds of the girls he reminded would reply, but sometimes, the messages sent out were also sunk in the sea. As far as he knew, there were only three girls who went to report the crime in the follow-up.

Since then, Wang Lan has discovered more group chats through social platforms, in which members continue to share photos of girls, most of which are life photos.

In January 2022, through the group chat QR code provided by Wang Lan, the surging news reporter anonymously joined a QQ group. According to the group announcement, applicants need to be reviewed to enter the main QQ group, and can share photos of girls in the main group for group friends to "humiliate". "Humiliation" refers to the use of insulting language to describe a woman in writing for others to fornicate.

As of January 6, the reporter noted that there were a total of 949 photos in the audit group photo album, which were divided into 52 albums according to the characters, and some album names contained information such as the girl's school, name, and occupation.

After paying 50 yuan to the moderator of the audit group, the reporter entered the paying group. Group information shows that the group was established on August 31, 2021, as of January 14, 2022, there are 427 members, only by invitation to join the group, group announcements encourage members to speak, and remind those who have not spoken for more than a month will be cleared out of the group.

In paid group chats, different accounts post dozens of pictures of women every day, including accounts that post photos of celebrities, but more publishers call the women in the pictures "people around them". These "people around" photos are photos of the girls' lives, selfies, and even ID photos. Publishers will mention some identity information at the same time, such as "colleague", "female doctor", "ex-girlfriend", etc.

Usually, after group members post photos of women in the group, group members will comment on the pictures, and often people "volunteer" to "match" the photos with humiliating texts. According to the announcement released by the group owner, there will be a competition in the group, and the group members can submit "text" to receive the award, the number of words submitted is not less than 200 words, the result is voted by the group members, and the final reward is divided into three grades: 50 yuan, 30 yuan and 20 yuan. In addition to "volunteer" writing, there are also writers in the group who customize the writing of "captions". A group member who paid to recruit essay writers in the group told the surging news reporter that the remuneration for writing a "caption" by hand ranges from 10 yuan to 40 yuan, and it is necessary to write 4-8 articles a day, requiring "big brain holes and enough word counts."

The surging news reporter found that behind the QQ group chat of more than 400 people, there are hidden transactions and deeper harm. With the help of the overseas encrypted communication software Telegram, more girls' information is constantly leaked and abused, even facilitating the pornography industry.

Through the aforementioned paid group, the reporter was given a link to join a chat room at Telegram. In the chat room, the reporter found 9 compressed files with a total size of about 5G, which contained hundreds of folders named after names, each containing personal information such as girls' photos and names, age, occupation, school, and even ID numbers, and some contained "humiliating captions."

In mid-January 2022, the surging news reporter searched and checked the user name information of the social platform disclosed in the chat room, and found that some bloggers' photos posted on the social platform were moved to such chat rooms, and bloggers were publicly suspected of being real names, home addresses and ID card number information. On January 19, 2022, the reporter privately sent nearly ten bloggers through Weibo and some overseas social platforms, and as of press time, one blogger said that the photos in the pornographic chat room were indeed myself, and she did not know it. In addition, the reporter's search found that some bloggers whose personal information photos were disclosed had changed their user names, and some user names could not be displayed. Using the Internet, more chat rooms for people to be obscene online are secretly evolving. The reporter noticed that people often post links to new chat rooms in chat rooms to attract new members. Among the other 15 chat rooms that reporters joined, the largest number of people had more than 150,000 members, the number of people online was generally about 5,000, and tens of thousands of messages were updated daily.

Nights are the most active time in this type of chat room. On January 17, in a room with 141,000 members, a user uploaded a nude photo of a pregnant woman, which was cheered by the members. The personal information of female victims in the chat room is also not a secret, and members of the group will disclose their Weibo names to give members "directions".

These chat rooms are often classified by "proclivities", some can be joined without a threshold, and some are subject to a group entry fee. A user who claimed to have a "sharing girlfriend group" told reporters that there were more than 50 people in the (chat room), there were pictures and videos to share, and they could enter for 50 yuan.

Some pornographic "businesses" also attract customers and recruit people in multiple chat rooms. For $60, you can find someone to synthesize a picture of the genitals with the girl. Some people posted video shooting recruitment information in the group, saying that the remuneration for shooting a film ranged from 18,000 to 30,000 yuan. A user introduced that there is a hotel recording group to provide, you can also buy a "channel", real-time watching couples open the room, 499 yuan can buy 6, through the fluorite cloud to watch. The user sent reporters two screenshots of surveillance footage inside the suspected hotel room dated December 18, 2021.

"All morality, no rules"

"In the chat room, all the rules and morals seem to be gone, abandoned, and they send pictures as they please, stimulating their senses, and nothing else seems to matter." Since November 2020, Chen Can has been lurking in chat rooms in various telegraph groups. Chen Can said she still can't get out of her fear.

In May 2021, Chen Can inadvertently found her nude photos appearing in the chat room again, and she began to consciously collect her own photos in the chat room while privately communicating with her ex-boyfriend to confirm that her photos leaked were related to him.

Chen Can said that in August 2021, she provided the evidence collected such as chat screenshots in the telegram group and chat notes with her ex-boyfriend to a police station in a district in Chengdu, and the police station summoned Chen Can's ex-boyfriend after receiving the police. However, due to the insufficient number of photographs, it was impossible to file a criminal case. In the end, due to the invasion of privacy, Chen Can's ex-boyfriend was detained by the police for 5 days, and the police confiscated his mobile phone and other crime tools.

Dong Xiaoying, a lawyer at Guangdong Guoding Law Firm, has long been concerned about the protection of women's rights and interests, and she said that under the current legal system in the mainland, the cost and difficulty of rights protection are very high, requiring victims to fix evidence, have a sense of rights protection, and find corresponding departments, which may consume a lot of time, energy and money. Dong Xiaoying introduced that she had taken over the case of the girl's ex-boyfriend spreading the girl's photos, and repeatedly provided evidence to the police before successfully filing the case.

The difficulty of forensics also plagued Wang Xue. In August 2021, a private video of Wang Xue and her boyfriend was stolen and uploaded to Telegram's pornographic chat room.

For a long time, Wang Xue and her boyfriend could not face the shame of the intimate video being exposed. It wasn't until mid-November 2021 that they finally decided to face the matter positively. "I can only contact users who upload videos on various platforms, including Twitter and Telegram groups, and tell them that they want to delete these videos."

"We had no goal, we had to rummage at random." Wang Xue said.

How to get the victim out of the haze

Although all walks of life began to pay attention to the hidden sexual crimes in pornographic chat rooms, the victims are still struggling alone.

A number of victims who have personally experienced it told The Paper that after experiencing this incident, they would "lose control of their emotions" and have nightmares, and the nightmares frequently flashed the scene when the photos were uploaded into the chat group.

Chen Can is still fighting against this sentiment. "How do I face it? I felt like I was stuck in a quagmire, dirty. "Chen Can is worried about how to rebuild his life in the future." I get married later, how can my life go on, I will have to work later, how can I contact people with a normal attitude? ”

Wang Li, a lawyer at Shanghai Shenhao Law Firm, said in an interview with The Paper that the processing and forwarding of women's photos in the chat room was obviously an act of violating the woman's portrait rights. Article 1019 of the Civil Code expressly prohibits infringing on the portrait rights of others by means of defacing, defacing, or using information technology means to forge, and the portrait of the portrait rights holder shall not be produced, used or disclosed without the consent of the portrait rights holder.

Wang Li believes that the act of uploading photos in the chat room and the behavior of the candid photographer may constitute the crime of infringing on citizens' personal information. Article 293-1 of the Criminal Law stipulates that if, in violation of State regulations, a citizen's personal information is sold or provided to others, if the circumstances are serious, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years.

What constitutes a "serious circumstance"? Wang Li further explained that Article 5 of the Judicial Interpretation of the Supreme People's Procuratorate and SPC Law Interpretation [2017] No. 10 stipulates some criteria for "serious circumstances": "knowing or should have known that the information provided was used for crimes", "more than 50 pieces of trajectory information, communication content, credit information, and property information", "more than 500 pieces of personal information of citizens who may affect the safety of persons and property, such as accommodation information, communication records, health and physiological information, transaction information", and " In ten aspects, such as more than 5,000 pieces of citizens' personal information other than those specified above" or "illegal gains of more than 5,000 yuan", it should be said that the illegal uploading and forwarding of women's photos above is likely to constitute such a new type of crime.

When women encounter such situations, how should they defend their rights? Lawyer Wang Li said that the Civil Code and the Personal Information Protection Law came into force on November 1, 2021, and together with the criminal legislation on the crime of infringing on citizens' personal information under the new provisions of the Criminal Law Amendment (IX), which came into effect on November 1, 2015, it can be said that the mainland's legal protection system for such infringements has been initially established.

Wang Li suggested that if individual women who have been infringed can actively take up legal weapons to protect their legitimate rights and interests from civil claims, criminal reports, and other channels, the infringers will be more likely to reach the level of "serious circumstances" stipulated in the criminal law in the face of multiple rights protection and litigation; uploading and forwarding infringement acts will be punished more severely, which in turn will better play a social warning role.

Liu Xingliang, president of the DCCI Internet Research Institute, believes that these chat rooms are hidden, the number of WeChat and QQ groups is large, and the monitoring cannot be done, and some group chats are located on the extranet, which is even more difficult to supervise. The difficulty of detecting the theft of photos still exists in technology, most of these stolen photos are life photos, many are not pornographic pictures, and it is difficult for technology to monitor their circulation in group chats. In addition, there is a lag in the exposure and investigation of such incidents, and when the victim realizes that his photo has been stolen, the photo has often been disseminated for a long time.

Liu Xingliang pointed out that with the development of technology, new forms of violations of laws and regulations often appear on the Internet, and relevant departments should also follow up in a timely manner in terms of law and supervision.

It takes a lot of courage for the victims to get out of the haze itself, many victims choose to give up, endure, and never mention it again, and Zhao Zhuo hopes to do his best to help some victims.

When a victim confides his experience to Zhao Zhuo, Zhao Zhuo will calmly provide them with emotional support, suggest that they seek professional legal advice from a lawyer, and also recommend a suitable psychological counselor to them.

"When something happens, you can first seek a lawyer around you, see the extent to which the photos have spread, and go to the police station to report the case." Zhao Zhuo said that if this kind of thing really happens to him, "you still have to actively report the case, the most important thing should be the mentality, don't feel that you are wrong in this matter."

Looking back at the experience, Wang Xue found that he was no longer afraid. "Things are really going in a good direction, and gradually they are coming out." She said that the best solution for girls is to face it positively, if they don't deal with it and avoid facing it, "this thing is a bomb, sooner or later it will explode around."

(In the text, Zhao Zhuo, Wang Lan, Wang Xue, Chen Can, and Xia Yang are pseudonyms)

The Paper's reporter Zhuang An