Men Are Buying Hacking Tools to Use Against Their Wives and Friends

[demmiblue]

THOUSANDS OF MEN are members of Telegram groups and channels that advertise and sell hacking and surveillance services that can be used to harass friends, wives and girlfriends, and former partners, new research has uncovered. The findings, from a European nonprofit group, also say that the communities are involved in extensive trading, selling, and promotion of a huge variety of abusive content, including nonconsensual intimate images of women, so-called nudifying services, plus folders of images that sellers claim include child sexual abuse material and depictions of incest and rape.

Over six weeks earlier this year, researchers at the algorithmic auditing group AI Forensics analyzed nearly 2.8 million messages sent across 16 Italian and Spanish Telegram communities that are regularly posting abusive content targeting women and girls. More than 24,000 members of the Telegram groups and channels took part in posting 82,723 images, videos, and audio files over the course of the study, the analysis says. Many posts target celebrities and influencers, but men in the groups also frequently victimize women they know.

“We tend to forget that most victims are ordinary women who sometimes don’t even know that their pictures are shared or manipulated in these types of channels,” says Silvia Semenzin, a researcher at AI Forensics who previously exposed Italian Telegram channels engaging in similar behavior as far back as 2019. “The majority of this violence is directed towards people who the perpetrators know,” she says, suggesting that Telegram, which has over 1 billion monthly active users, according to company founder Pavel Durov, should be subject to stricter regulation and classed as a “very large online platform” under Europe’s online safety rules.

The findings come as Durov is fighting back against Russia’s efforts to block the messaging app in that country, which has long positioned itself as a messaging app that allows free speech but has simultaneously been used by some to share terrorist, sexual abuse, and cybercrime materials. Durov is under criminal investigation in France relating to alleged criminal activity taking place on Telegram, although he has consistently denied the allegations.

https://www.wired.com/story/men-are-buying-hacking-tools-to-use-against-their-wives-and-friends/