Transcript
INTERVIEWER
Today cyberspace has grown beyond anything that its architects could have imagined. Up to a third of humanity has access to the Internet and an increasing proportion of them have come to depend on it for education, entertainment, social interaction, even their livelihoods. And inevitably among those two and a half billion souls there are some you might want to steer well clear of.
ANGIE
The first pictures that out were just me in bikinis. And then the second ones that came out were lingerie, like a bra and panties, a bunch of stuff like that. At that point I didn’t know that people could hack into that website. I thought it was secure.
INTERVIEWER
This is Angie. Aged 14 she decided to store some mildly suggestive pictures of herself online securing them in a password protected website. They were meant only for her boyfriend.
ANGIE
So, one summer my friend messaged me and he was like, oh you have to see this. He sends me a link and all the pictures that I thought were secure had been hacked and linked on to like a different website. At that point I realised that it wasn’t just going to stop at one friend who saw it.
INTERVIEWER
Before long the hacked information went viral on the open Internet.
ANGIE
Even now it’s still very popular on the Internet and it’s been four years and it’s only getting bigger.
INTERVIEWER
How many people in the end do you think have viewed these pictures of you?
ANGIE
A lot. Millions.
INTERVIEWER
Millions.
ANGIE
Yeah.
INTERVIEWER
That must be a weird feeling?
ANGIE
Yeah. And there’s no way that I could fully ever get rid of all the pictures. Once it’s on the Internet it’s there for good. It got to the point where I realised like what kind of future can I have knowing that my reputation is this bad. Imagine like what happens when a job comes between me and someone else and they can’t take me because of what’s happened. So basically it feels like my life is over.