What to do When Your Nude Photos Surfaces Online?

I’m in my very early twenties. I made some horrific decisions in my late teens to send guys naked photos of myself. Yes, completely naked. Yes, including my face. While none of them have leaked as far as I know, I’ve been extremely anxious about the possibility that they one day will. I pray every day for it not to happen. I was young, stupid, and insecure. I’m going into a field where, if I’m successful, I’ll be in the public eye, where I’ll be well-known to some degree. What should I do?

Hundreds of nude, semi-nude, and revealing pictures of female celebrities were leaked after being stolen from their private collections when some hacker breached security and accessed the photos stored over a cloud platform. What if something like this happens to you?

Imagine this, One fine morning, you wake up early and are shocked to see that your nude photos have surfaced online; a few of your friends have sent you text messages while many others were calling you. You check links, and Damn, it is you. What you do now?? In this blog post, I am discussing a few things that you can do when your nude photos surface online.

If you don’t like to read, shame on you; still, I have this video for you.

Keep Calm and Accept It

You must immediately switch your gears to ‘damage control’ mode. The damage is done; now, you should only focus on controlling this damage and making sure that this is controlled and is not allowed to spread further. Get ready!! Keep calm, control your emotions, do not make unnecessary phone calls, and do not share links with many more people.

Pieces of Evidence

Start collecting pieces of evidence; Which website has published your naked photos? Make sure you have the website name web site URL with you. DO NOT forget to take full page screen grabs, website IP address, and profile of the person who uploaded the photos, is anyone else in the picture? Let him/her know the same (in private). Keep a record of all this.

File a Complaint with Cyber Crime Department.

Contact the nearest cyber cell. If you do not know where on this earth is this cyber cell, contact the nearest police station, and they will guide you. Suppose you have recognized the person who has uploaded a photo, file a complaint against him/her. Keep a copy of this complaint and all other documents with you.

Set Google alerts

Try to understand the content of the page on which your image was uploaded. The same person might upload the image on multiple websites with the same message/title/keywords. Set Google Alert for those, for example, <your name> nude. This will serve as your tracking tool.

Do a Reverse Image Search

Use the uploaded picture as your search to find related images from around the web. Google will show you all similar images hosted on other websites. This will help you to understand if the same photo is posted on multiple websites. Keep track of all those websites too. Link here.

Contact Websites

Use the contact us forms on the website where your photo is uploaded, file a complaint with them and request immediate action and removal of the photo. The photo shall be deleted from the web server in order to get it deleted from image searches as well. Merely deleting a web page will not help in this case.

Suppose there is no response from a website in 24-48 hours, file a complaint with the web host. Find where the website is hosted and file a complaint with them. You can use http://www.whoishostingthis.com/

Take follow-ups

Take follow-ups with law enforcement authorities, your attorney, and all websites to whom you have contacted. Make sure everyone is working and is on the same page.

Above steps are meant to help someone who is a victim of a hack or any act of a disturbed and sick-minded person. There are many other steps which can be taken, but to make a start above steps shall help to tackle this disaster of finding your nude photos online.

Readers: Your take on this? What else can be done?