Revenge Porn Site Users Connected To Government IP Addresses: Report

An investigation by the Daily Beast Thursday revealed that several users of revenge porn site Anon-IB are connecting to the site from government internet networks, including the Senate, Navy and Executive Branch.

Revenge porn is non-consensual sharing of nude photographs of a person, often to intimidate or hurt them, and commonly done without their knowledge. Anon-IB is an image board site that hosts nude pictures, according to the Daily Beast. The nudes are called “wins” by users of the site.

With a set of IP addresses provided by Norwegian newspaper VG, the Daily Beast discovered that a number of Anon-IB users had government IP addresses. An IP address is the number designation assigned to each computer that is attached to the internet. With only the number one can’t determine whether the user was a government employee or a guest using the network. Hackers can also reroute internet traffic to make it appear as if it's coming from an IP address it is not, but the Daily Beast reported that the government computers did not appear on a list of hacked machines.

Some of the users connecting to Anon-IB from government IP addresses posted nude photos of women and requested nude photos of other women.

“Looking for wins of [name redacted]. She used to send nudes to my friend all of the time. Would love to see some more,” one user posting with a Senate IP address wrote in August, according to the Daily Beast.

Others came from Navy IP addresses.

“Anyone have [name redacted]? She left her husband for another dude while he was deployed. Heard there is win and she is a sex-crazed freak,” wrote another user.

In August, an online Marine Corps group that shared illicit nude photos of female Marines was discovered and prompted the Navy to make it illegal to share nude photos of service members with consent. A different Daily Beast investigation found that the practice continued unabated in the Marines even after the scandal initially broke.