‘They said: aren’t you that porn star?’ The woman hunting down image-based abuse

"Faces of exes," Mia Landsem read out loud, as she clicked on a link to a forum exposing intimate images of ex-girlfriends, her frowning brow illuminated by a three-screen computer. On the 25-year-old's neck, underneath wisps of blond hair, are tattooed reminders in Norwegian to be "brave" and "don't give a fuck." An internet security expert by day, by night she has made it her mission to hunt down and report such images from her apartment in Oslo. "I try to focus on the worst ones," she said. "I can maybe get a few groups removed in a day, but then 20 more appear."

Digital image-based sexual abuse - a catch-all phrase that includes deepfake pornography, so-called "upskirting" and "revenge porn", a term rejected by activists for implying the victim has done something wrong - is a global problem on the rise. Almost three out of four victims are women, according to a 2019 study by the University of Exeter. But there are male victims and female perpetrators.

Catching digital perpetrators was, in Landsem's own words, initially a way to stay alive. At 18, she was at a bar in the Norwegian city of Trondheim when she noticed a group of guys sniggering at her. When she asked what was so funny, they said: "Aren't you that porn star?" Landsem recalled. "I didn't understand anything. Then they showed me that photo."

In it, Landsem and her ex-boyfriend were having sex. She was 16 at the time. "I remember running to the toilet of the bar and crying," Landsem said. Seeing how distressed she was, the men deleted the image. But it was already making the rounds of the city.

Although it is difficult to pin down how widespread digital intimate image-based abuse is, aid organisations in several countries reported that it exploded during the pandemic. "We're seeing more and more content," said Sophie Mortimer, manager at the UK Revenge Porn Helpline, whose caseload surged to a record of 3,146 cases in 2020. "We need to act in a global manner," Mortimer said. "Because that's how the internet works, it is a global thing."

Victims are often left to fight their battles alone due to what lawyers, scholars, psychologists and activists interviewed across Europe for this article deplored as a lack of will to prosecute the crime and to regulate tech companies.

Landsem said she never charges victims for her help, whether they are 12-year-olds or celebrities. "No one should have to pay for this," she said.

Most evenings, she spends hours going through her emails, responding to desperate requests for help. She also has hundreds of bots set up across the internet, alerting her to when new groups form so that she can report them. "If there's a crime scene and someone is murdering someone, you have to gather the evidence right after it happened," she said. "That's why I try to help with the most basic evidence I'm allowed to gather, and I give it to the police to make them work a bit faster." She sometimes uses fake identities to join closed groups, taking screenshots along her way that she sends to the police and to the tech platforms. Among the other digital evidence she collects are user names, IP addresses, URLs and the metadata from the images themselves - which can include when and where the photograph was taken, and on what device.

What people often fail to understand, Landsem said, is how common it is to upload nude images of others without their consent - especially among teenagers. (According to the Norwegian police, digital image-based sexual abuse becomes a problem at the age of 12-13.) "I wouldn't call it a subculture, it's everyone," Landsem said.

Clare McGlynn, a law professor at Durham University, described digital image-based sexual abuse as "about a masculine culture that rewards treating women not very well." "It's about power and control," she said. "The partner that would take a picture of someone in the shower and then pass it to someone else, it is just because they can, they want to."

Shame is an important reason why victims are reluctant to seek justice, according to lawyers, scholars and activists interviewed for this article. It took Landsem nearly two years before she reported her ex-boyfriend. When she did, she included proof of him admitting to the crime. "I served the police the case on a golden plate," Landsem said. Months later, the police dropped the case. "I was very depressed, I didn't want anyone else to experience that. I started looking at the legislation, how to help others so that they wouldn't have to be called a porn star on a night out." (In the end, Landsem's ex got fined for spreading pornography.)

Activists such as Pardo believe tech platforms need to do more. This spring, the EU came close to adopting a landmark law that would have increased pressure on websites publishing pornographic content. But during the final stretch of late-night political haggling, the relevant article 24b of the Digital Services Act (DSA) disappeared from the text.

"No one was willing to fight for it," said Alexandra Geese, a Green MEP who campaigned to get the measure through. "You know, it's just women, who cares? It's not business. It's not important." A European directive against violence against women is currently in the works, but, according to Geese, "it does not bite." Victims, she said, would still be left with the burden of chasing down the images and proving who uploaded them, "which is impossible, basically."

Prosecuting image-based sexual abuse is tricky, not least because of its prevalence. Inside the headquarters of Kripos, Norway's national unit for combating organised and other serious crime, police officers dealing with cyber abuse sift through thousands of images every year.

A Kripos' superintendent, Helge Haugland, said international cooperation was key in order to successfully prosecute digital image-based abuse, and welcomed that an increasing number of platforms were seeking to join efforts to alert authorities to abusive material. But "it would be easier for us if there was one way to ask all the companies for data, instead of it being up to the tech platforms," Haugland said.

It is in this emerging field that people like Landsem are operating, though Haugland warned that well-intentioned hacktivists could hinder police operations and, if operating illegally, fail to produce evidence that could be used in court. Landsem, who says she never does anything illegal, is well aware of the tension. "It's the hardest part of my job," she said about doing nothing, when she knows she could do something. "It feels like someone is being murdered, and I'm watching."

This article was amended on 19 October 2022 to make clear that Kripos's role is not confined to child sexual abuse; it investigates a gamut of serious crime.

This work was co-funded by the Journalism Fund.

The UK Revenge Porn Helpline can be contacted on 0345 6000 459 or online at revengepornhelpline.org.uk