As the FBI said Monday it was addressing allegations that online accounts of several celebrities, including Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence, had been hacked, leading to the posting of their nude photographs online, NBC4 reminds viewers it's not just celebrities who are vulnerable.
What happened to them could happen to anyone who takes pictures on a phone.
Two and a half years ago, Charlotte Laws' daughter, Kayla, came to her with a problem.
"She took about 100 pictures and one of them was topless and she never intended to show the topless picture to anyone," Charlotte Laws said. "And three months later is when she was hacked and that topless picture ended up on the most notorious revenge porn website, is anyone up.Com."
Charlotte launched an attack against what she calls cyber rape.
"It's almost always women, it's misogyny and hatred of women on the Internet that's pretty pronounced."
Within months her daughter's topless selfie was removed from the Internet, isanyoneup.com was shut down and its founder, Hunter Moore, was arrested by the FBI along with his associate, Charles Evens.
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Moore and Evens face up to five years in federal prison for each of the conspiracy and computer hacking counts, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office press release.
The charge of aggravated identity theft carries a mandatory two-year sentence to run consecutive to any other sentence imposed in the case.
Charlotte's crusade didn't come easy.
"I had phone call death threats, I had emails, I had death threats on twitter. It was scary," she said.
Charlotte's research has paved the way for FBI research and new anti-revenge porn laws in California.
She recommends that victims:
- Contact the FBI and local law enforcement;
- Send take-down-notices to google, to the host site and its owner;
- Copyright the hacked photos.
For more information, visit http://www.endrevengeporn.org/. Anyone interested in contacting Charlotte Laws is encouraged to email her at officeofcharlottelaws@yahoo.com
