Porn pics revenge
Ex bombards man’s WhatsApp contacts with naked image
IT MUST have been a rude awakening. Friends and WhatsApp contacts of a man who had been estranged from his girlfriend woke up yesterday morning to be greeted with a pornographic image on their cellphones.
Their screens appear to have been targeted as part of an act of revenge by his former partner.
The 36-year-old man said he had tried to do damage control, only to find that she had withdrawn him from the WhatsApp chat groups he belonged to. This prevented him from erasing the material.
“I really do not know what to do,” said the man, who asked not to be identified. “This could damage my professional reputation.”
One member of a chat group that received the image was Kyle van Reenen, Durban-based spokesman for Marshall Security.
In desperation, the man contacted Van Reenen to explain the situation and to apologise to anyone who may have seen it.
“I’m terribly sorry for disturbing (you) this early in the morning,” he wrote to Van Reenen.
“My now ex took the phone while I was sleeping and sent porn to random contacts and I saw on my WhatsApp log it’s been sent to the Marshall Group as well.
“Please warn people not to open the images if it helps at all.
“She exited my groups so I can’t apologise myself.
“Please let me know if I can do something else to try and salvage the situation.”
Van Reenen said around 30 people were members of the country-wide group, and the nature of social media was such that it could easily have been passed on.
“I am still in shock,” said the man from Pretoria, whose girlfriend was temporarily living in his house since their break-up.
He said he did not know where she had got the image from and insisted it was not of himself.
According to Cape Town-based internet communication legal expert, Dominic Cull of Ellipsis Regulatory Solutions, this was not likely to be a case of the much-spoken-about revenge pornography.
“Revenge pornography is a popular title for a range of activities, all to do with intentionally disseminating private information of a sexual nature. If the image is not of him, the intention may be there, but was any harm done?”
Cull said it could amount to harassment, particularly if the ex-girlfriend was to do it repeatedly.
The act of sending pornographic images on social media was illegal in terms of the Films and Publications Act.
Dissemination on WhatsApp was dangerous as children could easily access the images, he said. “Reckless negligence would find one on the wrong side of the law.”
Hilton-based internet communications commentator Charles Webster said it was more difficult to eliminate such images from WhatsApp than Facebook.
“Facebook administrators have more power,” he said.
WhatsApp users could turn off their phones and when they turned them on again they might miss seeing the offensive images if a lot of messages had come in in the interim.
They might never know the offensive images were there.
Cull said changes were under way so the law could “get a grip” on the issue of pornographic material. Draft legislation for the Cyber Crimes and Cyber Security Bill is set to be presented to the cabinet in September and to be passed in Parliament next year.
He said legislators were grappling with the issue worldwide as people could access material from anywhere using the internet and disseminate it.
“There are no easy answers,” he said.
The Pretoria victim would not give his ex-girlfriend’s details, saying she was “not in a good space” mentally and he did not wish her any harm.
He also said he had caught her in the act of sending out the WhatsApp messages on his cellphone, stopped her and kicked her out of his home.
By the time of going to press the police had not responded to questions about pornography being sent on social media.
Comment from the National Prosecuting Authority was also not forthcoming.