Thousands of women are being targeted on a men's forum fishing for nudes. Here is why it can't be shut down

7NEWS

24-05-2025

A disturbing online forum has been discovered in which thousands of women are being targeted in the trade of nude images.
Requests use names and social media handles to fish for images and videos of specific women, mostly from NSW, with explicit files being shared daily on the forum, The Daily Telegraph reported.
Like a sport, successfully procured images and videos are called 'wins' by anonymous male users, and then shared on a dedicated 'shame thread', it reports.
Authorities are aware of the forum, but because no victims have come forward to police, there is no criminal investigation, 7NEWS.com.au understands.
eSafety has been aware of this particular forum since early 2025, but it does not have the authority to take down entire sites under the Online Safety Act — it only has the authority to remove harmful content, and even that is a struggle in this instance.
'Not only are these rogue image boards hosted in varying locations overseas but they continually swap hosting providers and domain names to avoid action from eSafety or police,' an eSafety spokesperson told 7NEWS.com.au.
'These sites are often used to facilitate image-based abuse and doxxing, and have been the subject of multiple investigations and takedown actions by eSafety over time.
'Unfortunately, they frequently re-emerge under new names or domains, aided by permissive hosting arrangements and jurisdictions that make enforcement more difficult.'
'They are targeted acts of abuse'
With consent, sharing intimate images is not a crime, but NSW Police told 7NEWS.com.au: 'If the images are not authorised to be distributed, it is an offence which should be reported to police.'
Recording an image without consent, and distributing an image without consent can result in a cumulative six years in jail for anyone found guilty, according to the Crimes Act.
But NSW Police need a victim to come forward to launch an investigation, and 'specific, detailed information to secure a successful prosecution'.
It is unclear whether police or eSafety attempt to track down the women being targeted on the forum, to alert them to the potential crimes being perpetrated against them, before the content is taken down.
However, the eSafety spokesperson said: 'Victim-survivors consistently tell us that content takedown is their main concern.'
'Our clear priority is to support those impacted and work to have this type of content removed as quickly as possible.'
'While we act swiftly to remove harmful material, it is police who are responsible for pursuing criminal charges. We also refer serious matters to the appropriate law enforcement agencies and often work in parallel with them during investigations.
'Image-based abuse and doxxing are not just breaches of privacy, they are targeted acts of abuse that weaponise vulnerability and deny individuals control over their identity, safety and reputation.'
Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety (ANROWS) chief executive Tessa Boyd-Caine told 7NEWS.com.au that the forum is an example of the online spaces where technology-facilitated abuse is rapidly evolving to facilitate domestic, family, and sexual violence.
'Those are forms of violence that are highly gendered,' she said. 'Women and children are the vast majority of victims and survivors — and we know that men, and young men, and sometimes boys, are the vast majority of people using these forms of violence.'
A 'blunt instrument' amid big picture efforts
Boyd-Caine said that evidence shows people who use forums in this way know they are committing an offence.
In terms of criminal justice for these people, she said the law 'lags behind the evolution of these websites and the way that they're used', but added that targeting individual perpetrators is not the fastest way to attack the wider problem.
'Directly targeting the people using these platforms in this way can be quite a blunt instrument — it can be very hard to identify, bring charges against, and prosecute an individual,' she said.
Boyd-Caine said, 'a much broader impact can come from the role of technology companies'.
How Australia works with the companies and web hosts behind the platforms where image-based abuse and doxxing occurs, is a job for the eSafety Commissioner.
'This is about how businesses do their business, so the ability to regulate this industry is really critical part of our efforts,' Boyd-Caine said.
The eSafety Commissioner is world-leading in its efforts and has been tracking and taking action against rogue websites since at least 2016.
'Would be a blast from the past'
Women from Sydney and regional NSW including the Northern Beaches, Bathurst, Dubbo, Maitland and Newcastle have been targeted on this recently discovered forum, the Daily Telegraph reports.
It reports that burner Snapchat accounts are also being shared between users on forum to avoid being identified.
'Anyone got (woman's name omitted) from Kempsey, NSW?' one man reportedly wrote on the forum. 'Anyone got this big t** s*** from Sydney?' another reportedly wrote.
'Anyone got anything of (woman's name omitted). Would be a blast from the past (if) anyone's got something in the vault, she was my teacher for a couple of years. One of the lads said he'd seen a couple of pics and a vid years ago,' another reportedly wrote.
While we understand these kinds of forums to be global, these examples appear to show a concentration of local abuse.
'We tend to think about the online space as somehow public and disconnected from our direct relationships, but the evidence shows quite the opposite,' Boyd-Caine said.
'We're likely to be looking at these coercive and controlling behaviours that often underpin intimate partner or family violence, where much of that control is not of a physical or sexual or even emotional abuse — it's these other patterns of control.'
'The use of women's images by their partners or ex-partners is another way that people are using violence to exert that control.
'We need much more targeting services and system responses that are grappling with the reality of how the online world is increasingly being used in different ways to perpetuate this abuse and violence.'
eSafety has a high success rate in removing harmful material — up to 98 per cent in cases of image-based abuse — and urged Australians to continue reporting further instances of image-based abuse, doxing to eSafety.
The regulator also recommended a tool by the organisation Stop Non-Consensual Intimate Image Abuse, which can prevent intimate images and videos being uploaded online — you just need to have a copy of the file yourself.
The free tool creates a 'digital fingerprint' out of the file, and prevents it being shared on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bumble, OnlyFans and Reddit. A separate tool is available for people under the age of 18.
In an emergency, call 000.