Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
AN INTERNET MONITORING website overseen by the Department of Justice has warned of an “emerging trend” of intimate image abuse from scam accounts on Instagram.
Hotline.ie has warned of an increase in what they call cloned Instagram accounts in which scammers will impersonate real women and post links to webpages of pornography claiming to be of them.
Hotline.ie is Ireland’s national reporting centre for illegal online content, including child sexual abuse images and intimate images of a person which have been shared without their consent.
These scam accounts and the webpages associated with them violate the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020 also known as Coco’s Law, which carries a maximum penalty of a €5,000 fine and/or 12 months imprisonment.
Nineteen-year-old student Mia Connolly, whose name has been changed, was out for a meal with friends three months ago when she first noticed that someone was impersonating her.
At first she was asked by a number of people if she had made a new account on the social media app.
“But then after a few hours it posted all these photos of me with creepy sexually suggestive captions, and I noticed it was following dozens of men that I knew from Instagram. The fake account would mainly post on an Instagram story which disappears after 24 hours, and I think that made it easier for them to avoid people reporting it,” she told The Journal.
This impostor had scoured Mia’s real account to find friends and acquaintances, and at one point had followed over one hundred men to draw their attention before blocking Mia, to prevent her seeing and reporting the fraud.
The fake account used some photographs of her alongside photos showing other women with their faces hidden or obscured.
“It would show a nude woman from the neck down, so that they could make people think it was me. There were emojis barely covering her nipples and genital area. At the start I thought it was a joke, but then with that type of content with captions telling people to click a link to see more, appearing next to real photos of me I started getting worried, and then it started to follow my family members.”
‘A few people refused to believe it was fake’
This harmful phenomenon is so under-researched that it doesn’t have an official name but it’s been occurring on Instagram for almost half a decade.
Many victims of this crime are primarily concerned with the Instagram accounts themselves and don’t report the sites linked with them to Hotline.ie, according to a spokesperson for the centre.
“Thus, it is possible that Hotline.ie is only seeing a small sample of these incidents which might not be indicative of the true scale of the issue,” they said.
Mia was terrified that she could get removed from her college course if the account was able to get enough attention. Her fear was that university staff or potential employers might search for her name online and assume that this highly sexualised account was run by her.
“I know a few people my age who asked me about it and they just refused to believe it was fake and they would go around spreading rumours I was doing porn,” she said.
Dr Maggie Brennan, assistant professor in Dublin City University’s School of Psychology specialising in online safety and revenge pornography, says that sites like this generate revenue simply by having people visit them.
“Anyone that visits from that link is seen as a potential customer and they often send you to several different websites. So even if you don’t spend money the website will pay these perpetrators for the traffic they’ve generated from their links.”
“I don’t think that the people operating these accounts have any scruples about age at all. There are factors that they use to determine who to target, like someone’s amount of followers because that makes the most money. But occasionally they’ll use the profiles of underage girls and even if they know that they’re using a child’s identity for the purpose of selling pornography, they don’t care,” Dr Brennan added.
‘When I saw that it had followed my dad, my heart sank’
Mia’s experience is far from unique.
Aoife Hughes was making dinner in her student accommodation when she received dozens of messages from people telling her that her online identity had been stolen to sell pornography.
Aoife Hughes is not her real name; she didn’t want to link her identity to the porn industry any more than the perpetrators had already done.
“My phone started going off like crazy and it was from a load of different boys I knew letting me know that the account had followed them. It didn’t follow any of my female friends,” she said, several days after the incident.
“It followed my little brother and he had to see these perfectly innocent selfies of me that were stolen from my account and then put next to captions like ‘I’m ready to get naughty.’ But when I saw that it followed my dad, my heart sank. I had the most awkward phonecall of my life, almost in tears. And he was like ‘who did this?’ And obviously I didn’t know, I still don’t know.”
Like in Mia’s case, Aoife’s impersonator had blocked her so that she couldn’t even see this account herself.
She describes that day as being both terrifying and infuriating because she had to rely on messages and screenshots from her friends about what was happening.
Despite the high probability that the link on her account would be a virus, one of her friends took a risk and clicked on it, finding that it brought them to a profile on a porn website which also used Aoife’s full name and one of her photos as the profile picture.
Directly behind the profile picture – an inconspicuous selfie she took in her bedroom to show off a new hairstyle – was a photo of a collection of sex toys.
“I wanted to burst out in tears at that stage. I’m not sure how many people clicked the link but considering about one hundred people got a notification that this account was following them, at least a handful of them must have clicked it out of curiosity,” she said.
“Out of all the people that texted me to make me aware of the account, some of them were like ‘is this real?’ or ‘why did you make this?’. It was depressing to know that some people had actually fallen for it.”
‘They target ordinary young women because they have no resources at all to fight this’
Another woman who had to deal with this requested that only her first name be used.
Sarah, a 20-year-old student from Dublin, was appalled by what was written under photographs of her.
“It said like ‘if you’re nagging and wanting a gagging’ and disgusting stuff like ‘dirty little whore’ and it was so stomach churning to see someone not only writing that next to photos of me but doing it in a way to make people think I had written it.”
She has had fake Tinder accounts made of her in the past and feels as though this predatory behaviour towards women is treated as something they are expected to just accept and move on from.
“We shouldn’t have to put up with this. It’s so tiring,” she said.
“The fact that there was someone going through any photos where I was going out for the night or something and trying to choose which photos to make me look like a sex worker is so unnerving. It definitely makes me worried about what I post in future.”
Mia and Aoife’s only way to try and have their impostor accounts deleted was to ask their followers to report it, which forced them to bring even more attention to their existence: the exact opposite of what a frightened young woman would want to do in such a humiliating situation.
“The perpetrators of this often target people with thousands of followers, internet celebrities or models who already have a high level of people interacting with them,” Dr Brennan explained.
“But targeting ordinary young women is easier because they have no resources at all to fight this. They don’t have the lawyers or the connections within the social media companies to make these things go away in the blink of an eye which makes the whole ordeal so terrifying for them,” she added.
Dr Brennan considers this activity to be a form of image-based sexual abuse due to the emotional distress and humiliation caused to the women who fall victim to it.
This makes them targets as their follower counts translate to more traffic to the site and more money for the fraudsters.
Aoife reported the site to Hotline.ie and it was removed shortly afterwards.
‘Nowhere near enough people are aware of the scale of this or that it happens at all’
Reflecting on the situation weeks later she felt disheartened about how women are treated online.
“The internet has had creeps on it for a while but the fact it’s impossible to avoid people trying to use you for sexual reasons is very depressing. I wouldn’t have even known it existed if people hadn’t pointed it out to me. I think the account was only active for a few days before it was brought to my attention but it could have been longer.”
Aoife pointed out that many women already feel unsafe in day-to-day life “and now Instagram isn’t even a safe place for us to be because someone could use your name and photos for something like this and not care about what damage it does to your reputation or self-esteem,” she said.
Mia Connolly managed to rally enough friends and sympathisers to report the account impersonating her, and it was subsequently deleted by Instagram.
But days later another account appeared, and as of the time of writing has not been removed yet.
“People thought I was hacked or whatever and it’s been reported loads, maybe twenty times and it’s still up. At least twenty people reported the second one. But if Instagram knows it happened to me before then why is it so hard for them to take action again?” she questioned.
She fears that whoever made these accounts has a stockpile of photos of her and that she’ll be stuck in a never-ending game of cat and mouse, forever trying to report new accounts when a friend brings it to her attention, only for another to appear.
Dr Brennan believes that an untold number of women and girls across the world find themselves in the same distressing situation as Aoife and Mia and Sarah, often with little recourse.
“I have no idea how often this occurs, which is a problem in and of itself. Nowhere near enough people are aware of the scale of this or that it happens at all. And if we can’t see the problem then we can’t respond to it.”
Is it possible to stop this happening?
One potential way to deal with this is to seek prosecution against the perpetrator - which is often incredibly difficult due to the anonymity provided by the internet, and the difficulty that large entities like Instagram have with cooperating with gardaí on case-by-case issues.
Jamie Klingler co-founded the Reclaim These Streets activist group in the UK to bring attention to violence against women shortly after the initial disappearance of Sarah Everard, but since found herself campaigning for a different but related cause.
She also fell victim to the same pornographic impersonation on Instagram and had to resort to asking her eighteen thousand Twitter followers to report the account.
When Klingler brought the matter to London’s Metropolitan Police in February, she was told there was “no realistic prospect of identifying suspects” and the case was closed.
After backlash on social media Klingler’s case was reopened, leading her to remark that “there’s got to be a way other than making it go viral. It shouldn’t be that I get special treatment for this because I’ve been on the news.”
The Department of Justice has urged anyone who has been a victim of this crime to report it to Hotline.ie or to contact An Garda Síochána.
Speaking about Coco’s Law specifically, the Department added: “The new legislation is intentionally silent about the types of technology that may be used to commit the offences so as to cover all forms of online and offline communications that cause harm to a victim.”
The closest any of these women have come to finding out the identity of the people responsible for their shame was Sarah, who attempted to log into the pornographic Instagram account and selected the ‘Forgot Password’ option.
This sent a code to the phone number used to make the account.
While the number itself was hidden on her screen she was able to see that it began with the number 63, the national telephone identifier number for the Philipines which means her imitators were likely based there.
This information was of little comfort to her.
Despite their best efforts, there is little that can be currently done to prevent this from happening to these women again, or to other women on social media.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
About time a campaign on this matter was started. May I add the ‘early pension’ to it too. We’re all being told that the age for state pensions is going up, it’ll be age 70 to 75 by the time I retire. Yet our TDs get MASSIVE pensions from as early as age 50. One example would be Ivan Yates’ €83,000 a year and he’s only 53!!!!
That is just crazy and has to stop!! This campaign will have my full support and not just by clicking some online poll either.
dead right on the pensions front. ridiculous. they should need to be retirement age to draw one
Well said!
Is Enda Kenny not also receiving a Ministerial pension, while holding the office of Taoiseach? Is he not also paying himself 50,000 euro per year on top of that again, as a party leader? Is Gilmore not paying himself 23,000 per year as a party leader also? They are robbed of morality, if think this is justifiable. I call it financial terrorism.
Check out Cowens pension €153k per year for the rest of his life ‘retired’ at 51…..
Early political pensions have been ended as far as I know. Maximum pension should be 75k. More than enough.
Is funny how we have allowed this ??????? to go on for that long..they change the law to suite them and tell us we going thru a recession…..they are all the same,they dont care about the country,they only care about their big fat paycheck..
Our country is a joke we put up with to much shit from the government. They say jump and we say how hi, it’s about time we stick up for what’s right for us. The money they are getting in government is sicking and yet they would take money off the old age pensioner and not drop the wages in the government.
Cap Ministers salaries at 100k. That’s it. No TD’s salary on top. Contributory pensions as well. By all means they can have vouched expenses. The old argument of big salaries attracting the brightest hasn’t worked so far. In this country, “pay peanuts, get monkeys” does not apply….
More like…the more nuts you give the bigger the monkey you get.
Or in Phil Hogan’s case…the bigger the Ape you get!!!
Great points. Agree with most. I have one nitpick. Why should TDs get expenses to show up to work? They work in D2 and vote along party lines so why do they need to travel back to their old homes and more importantly why should it be funded by the tax payer? Let them claim for vouched public transport only. No one should get paid to go to work.
Hi Mór – My view is that Dublin TDs should get nothing, but TDs from further out should get vouched expenses for the actual cost of accommodation in Dublin and travel to it. Again, to come back to the real world, if a person works in, say, Cork but is sent to Dublin regularly (in this case, when the Dáil sits) they would be compensated for that.
Of course, most companies put limits on what you can spend and demand receipts. My view is that when the basic rate for such travel starts at €12k for those who live in Dublin, the guys on the west coast are probably getting too much as well versus the real cost of coming to and staying in Dublin while living in a constituency far away.
This may be an elementary point but the Irish State is not a company.
Alan, of course not. But the vast majority of people in a job work for private companies, and they are the best yardstick of salaries and conditions. And in relation to expenses, Revenue guidelines for everyone who’s not a politician (no travel to work money, no unvouched expenses) are a good guide also.
“they are the best yardstick of salaries and conditions.”
You have started off with this assumption and is taken for granted that how a private business is run can be applied to how a State operates with regards to its employees and how they are paid.
Why do you think that what happens in private sector businesses can or should apply to the State?
Alan, the private sector is where salaries are set for the majority of individuals based on what qualifications and responsibilities are worth, given their supply and the demand for them. It takes into account things like consumer prices and standards of living. What yardstick would you use?
Alan, why are you arguing. The country should be run as tight as a private company. Why don’t you provide a solid argument on why the management of our country shouldn’t be compared to the private sector before you go criticising the author of this article.
You will have a lot more dislikes by the end of this day…
A move like this would certainly enable politicians to empathise with the electorate on the cuts and increases they vote for. As we can see from Mahon, the argument that politicos need to be well paid in order to dissuade them from corruption doesn’t wash
Just wait and see what the government say in response to this report! You’ll hear stuff like “remuneration has to be high, so as to attract the best people into politics” I mean people like Phil Hogan and Lucinda Creighton! Enough said!
Exactly, Aaron. Their remit is to serve the public, not fleece them.
Great article
The old maxim comes to my mind: Do as I say, not what I do.
Why stop at politicians?
Let’s have benchmarking again for all public servants as soon as the Croke Park con expires.
Screw the contract, let’s do it now.
Politician = Egotistical, over paid, repulsive pension rate, self serving, often corrupt and grossly incompetent. Can be seen around town with a brown paper bag. Time for some new definitions.
Should be term limits, serve 2 terms then you are out on your ear. Career politicians feather their own nests before they consider the public.
Good piece Aaron. Articulates my reasons for not paying the household charge. The “do as I say not as I do” approach of this government.
High time the gravy train was permanently derailed. The more they are paid, the less representation we get
extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.everyone of these parasites should be sacked imediately & bring in someone like michael o leary or someone with a proven track record in business to run the country.michael noonan is a teacher by profession & yet he is the minister for finance???? need i say more.no wonder we are a laughing stock around the world
€12000.to travel to work thats a disgrace. dont give then anything and put then up in a hotel and give the money directly to the hotel that they allowed to be built and some that had to close down. with a basic salary of €92000.
they still recieve up to€12000. and they have the neck to dip into our wages every time they want to fill the public purse. cap them all at €100000.for everything salary ,travel expense cleaning expenses, how much would that save, more importantly how much would they shout then.
Do as i say not as i do, thats the impression i get from our so called leaders
Ministers should be payed according to there qualifications ie if they are a teacher then pay them as a teacher even at top rate because if they become a minister for finance for example the are going to have to rely on advisers to run there department . This may attract better qualified people into government if they are payed accordingly
nicely written. bit on the populist slant but well argued and tastefully written.
i really wouldnt have so much of a problem wit all this money if they did a reasonable job.
I would
Irish population 4.58 million (Census 2011 Preliminary Results)
British population 62,262,000 million (Office of National Stastistics 2010)
im not suggedtin for a second that the pay rates are defensible. just that they might be if more of these people were fit for purpose, and i honestly think the bigger issue should be these unvouched expenses, at least in the meantime. tackle that, then the rates of pay.
Ministerial and TD salaries should be benchmarked against their equivalents in countries of similar size and per capita GDP.
All unvouched exenses and all allowances should be taxed as income as happens in the private sector. The Leaders allowance should be limited to the leaders of a party with a minimum of 10% of seats in the Dail.
There should be no additional political payments for independent TDs. It gives them an unfair advantage over potential independent opponents.
I forgot Pensions. These should be limited to 1/60th of their average annual salary, whilst Dail members, for each year of service whilst in the Dail. Payment to commence on retirement but not before reaching age 60. No public representative or servant should be permitted to draw a pension of any description, whilst receiving any other remuneration from the State or it’s agencies.
No, 60 is not good enough when they are trying to push retirement up to between 70 to 75. The pension entitlement should be at 65 now, and have it move up as the state pension does.
The old maxim comes to mind: Do what I say, not what I do.
So good a comment you said it twice!
All potential tds are attracted to the dail for the power and perks,nothing to do with representing the little guy!..look at that poor rte chap who tried to clear out the cobwebs,his office was a broom cupboard and he was handed a broom to sweep his ‘patch’..no wonder he baled out..
It’s the pensions that get me, their pay doesn’t bother me hugely as I think there is more to the job of a TD then just turning up to vote and looking after your constituency.
How can you justify Enda getting paid more than barrak Obama!!
We can talk about it until the cows come home but the status quo WILL BE MAINTAINED………..
You can be damn sure if TD’s salaries were not at the ridiculous high levels that they are, there wouldn’t be 166 of them. There would be a lot less politicians if salaries were in line with average wages. TD’s being public servants, self servants more like…
The peasant is the foundation of the state and must be governed with care. He must be allowed neither too much, nor too little, but just enough rice to live on and keep for seed in the following year. The remainder must be taken from him in tax. ~Honda Masanobu (1590–1616)
Well said! I so agree.
enda and the gang should try living on 200 social welfare for a year,over 4000 euro a week he takes off us. this 36000 euro average industrial wage some lies its the public service is setting that average wage not all us stuck in factorys or shops earning minimum wage and only dreaming to be able to reach that so called average wage .
There is nothing average about the average wage.
A single person on disability getting maximum rent allowance for sharing with no kids gets less per year than they get in travel expenses within Dublin!
I can see it now..
Aaron McKenna is also a fully fledged member of the Socialist Party and is a close confidante of Joe Higgins TD and Councillor Ruth Coppinger. This opinion piece is therefore partisan and biased. Do members of other political parties get to write for TheJournal.ie?
Did you read the whole article before coming to the conclusion it’s biased?
Aron McKenna wrote
“There are members of the Oireachtas, such as those from Sinn Fein and the Socialist Party, who say that they only take the average industrial wage of €36,000 per year. This is of no advantage to the taxpayer, however, as they give the balance of their salary to their parties to spend campaigning for votes.”
Well, that comes as news to me! And the socialist party too, I’m sure. Being a member of the business community I’m one of the first people who’d be sent to a gulag if Marxists came to power in Ireland.
You’re probably mixing up my work on the Defend Blanchardstown Hospital campaign, which I coordinate, with being a Trot. I don’t think defending services in your local hospital marks you as a communist.
In actual fact, I worked for Shane Ross during the last election. He and I would probably share a firing squad during the purge following Ireland’s transformation into a socialist paradise.
Is is u who set up the real pay website ? I added myself to it. Fair play to u, Aaron. It’s a start & best of luck. Why exactly is our Taoiseach getting paid more than the US President ? Shouldn’t be the case & where is the Troika in all of this ?
Ooops saoirseabu ;) Excellent piece aaron, well done.
It is incredible to think that “Pay me a huge sum or I’ll engage in criminal activity (bribery and corruption)” is the underlying reasoning behind their salaries.
Is it the case that if we don’t pay, they’ll simply steal it? If so, why are they stealing it NOW? Can we get a rebate?
I support this campaign but I think the website needs some changes. They need links to allow people to post a link to their social networks(+1, facebook thumbs up, twitte, etc) otherwise it may not reach enough people. A good example of this is the SOPA Ireland petition.
Looking good now
It is clear to me that they current lot of Tds, including, independents will not budge on the politicians pay issue. So what can we do? Short of an army takeover, we are stuck. Could a peaceful revolution occur? I doubt it, the garda would be told to smash real civil disobedience, so we will get violence even if the people don’t start it if real change is attempted. Maybe so historians can tell of cases where the ruling class has been ousted without chaos.
Reminds me of the court of louis the 15th, now bear with me….he tried too implement tax reforms by taxing the clergy and noble men who were previously untaxed. but the only votes in favour he got was from the commoners who were citizens of merit. The proposal was massively out voted and so paved the way for the french revolution…..politicians be warned, just because turkeys don’t vote for christmas doesn’t mean that the chickens won’t come home to roost.
I can see it now Niamh. Yerself and Robespeirre lining ‘em up for the chop.
Heehee john you know I have spent my hhc money on this, now its just a case biding my time….
http://www.google.ie/m/search?hl=en&client=ms-android-hms-vf-ie&gl=ie&biw=320&bih=295&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=Irish+Guillotine+funny&oq=Irish+Guillotine+funny&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=185546l185664l0l186326l3l2l0l0l0l0l155l155l0.1l1l0&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.3…185546l185664l0l186326l3l2l0l0l0l0l155l155l0j1l1l0.frgbld.&mvs=0#i=4
Nice model! Mine has got a slight curvature to the cutting edge for a cleaner slice and is of a slightly more robust mechanism. None-the-less your model seems light and transportable, ideal for the revolutionary on the move!
Well intentioned but misguided. The central problem in Ireland is that all the incentives are out of synch with the requirements of private enterprise. The state has created enormous incentives for young people to enter law – tribunals, NAMA, numerous compensation schemes, huge ‘free’ legal aid fees. Likewise the fees earned by the big accounting firms doing government work bear little relation to what private companies are prepared to pay. Salaries and pensions in the public service, third level, semi states are a couple of gears up from what employers can afford – and anyone thinking the Chinese are going to hand out dosh to keep the gravy flowing, they are mistaken.
Vouch the damn expenses! Then move the Dail to the midlands, so it is centrally located to all corners of the island.. Somewhere with a good, road and rail links, and build barrack accomodation for the feckers. Wait! Isn’t the government nuclear bomb shelter in Athlone? Perfect.
have your say