‘I’m appalled’: Porn site featuring Australian school girls back online after shut down
A young Queensland bodybuilder has led the call for more to be done, after a website featuring thousands of sexually explicit pictures of Australian school girls re-emerged online.
This week authorities confirmed the malicious website had resurfaced, merely a week after it was shut down.
The website launched in late 2015 contained graphic images of school students, some believed to be as young as 14-years-old.
The images of the young women either naked or semi-naked, have been widely shared across social media, sparking a nationwide scandal.
The website encourages men to share or trade sexually explicit images of young women from high school and universities across Australia.
One of the victims of the website Tiahna Prosser, a bodybuilder from Queensland, said she felt "sold" when she discovered her own photos had been plastered over a malicious pornography sharing site.
“I’m appalled that the website was up in the first place,” Prosser told Yahoo7.
“I can’t believe that the site is back up, more needs to be done,” she said.
Prosser uploads photos of her gym-toned body wearing bikinis before each competition, to her 10,000 Instagram followers.
The 18-year-old bodybuilder was outraged when she found out that 'points' were being offered to anyone who could upload nude pictures of her to the website.
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“I’m concerned it’s that easy to bring it back up online again,” Prosser said.
“Even after all the media attention this story has received the site was still able to be put up again.
“A lot more needs to be done to keep this for happening again.”
The website, which previously encouraged men to "hunt" for pictures of flagged women, was taken down less than two weeks ago.
But just as cyber experts predicted, the images have remained online and were pulled into a new site.
In a statement to Yahoo7, the Australian Federal Police said: “It has come to the awareness of law enforcement agencies that a website encouraging users to upload explicit images of young women has re-emerged online.”
“It is important to note that creating, accessing or distributing child pornography is a serious offence, even if you are a child yourself.
“Such offences have a maximum penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment,” the agency went on to state as a warning to any would-be lawbreakers.
Australian Federal Police are continuing their investigation of the site, however the leaked nude photos could stay online forever.
Australian National University cyber crime expert Roderic Broadhurst said it was often impossible to get the photos offline or catch those behind the site.
"We sometimes call them bulletproof ISP locations, jurisdictions that don't have standard cyber crime legislation, that don't have laws that enable people who use those sites to be extradited," he told AAP.
"They operate through proxies, in other words, they shift around their location. Although a service might be located in one place, it appears to be operating from another.
"If those images sit on a database in a foreign jurisdiction, where you don't have mutual legal assistance, how are we to recover them or stop them moving around?
"There's no control, no guarantee of getting them back. These young women possibly have to live with the fact these images are out there forever."
Why it can be impossible to get nude photos offline:
•Cyber crime can involve a victim in one country, an offender in another country and content from a third.
•Information can be encrypted (or written in code) and sent through a series of proxies (or indirect network services) so the last address is not the original source.
•This makes it difficult to find the original, but even if it's possible, there's still a code to crack.
•Site operators are usually based in countries with lax cyber crime legislation and no mutual legal assistance agreements.
Police have urged anyone who believe they have fallen victim to this site to report it to Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or the Child Protection Helpline on 132 111.
If you or someone you know has been impacted by sexual assault or exploitation support is available at 1800 RESPECT and Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800.
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