Fully dressed images are usually copied from a woman's profile on social networking sites only to be engineered to look like hardcore pornography. More often than not, the victims do not know who is behind the manipulation and are afraid that the smearing images will be spread further in an unhinged way, with users unable to distinguish a fake. In the manipulated images, only their face remains the same, but now it is sitting on a real porn model's body with bare breasts and exposed genitalia.
Twenty-two-year-old Maiken Lindhardt is one of the victims of the manipulation. Her perfectly decent images were doctored to look like hardcore porn.
"I know that it's not me, right? But others who have seen the pictures might well believe that it was me," a dismayed Maiken Lindhardt told Danish Radio.
The biggest problem is that it is impossible for the victims to fully put the incident behind them, since the fake images are never deleted and remain circulating on the internet. Additionally, it may impede one's career if a potential employer decides to run an online search.
To stop the torrent of profanities spewed against Danish women, Danish Radio launched a hotline, where similar cases of fake porn can be reported under the condition of anonymity.
Last week, Denmark presented a series of measures to curb so-called "revenge porn," which includes the sharing of explicit images of people online without their consent. Among other things, the penalty was raised from six months to two years in prison. Additionally, traffickers earning money by selling or exchanging naked images will also face harsher penalties.
In 2015, a high-profile trial involving fake pornography ended with the accused man being sentenced to six months' imprisonment and a fine for manipulating images of eleven girls, several of which were minors.
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