Overview:
- Leaked and consensual adult media profoundly impacts the lives of individuals who have their privacies affected
- Although it is not an easy task, there are tools to help users remove adult media online
- Individuals should take precautions when using the internet so that their media does not end up in the wrong hands
Definition and Types of Adult Media
Adult media refers to any media that depicts or describes specified sexual activities or specified anatomical areas. This type of media can appear online in various ways, including leaks and originally consensual content. Regardless of how it becomes public, adult media can have a significant impact on an individual’s personal and professional life. However, no matter how it ends up online, there are ways to remove adult media online and restore the individual’s reputation.
Leaked Content
Leaked adult media often includes sending nude images in confidence to someone. The receiver then shares the images without consent, for vengeful and malicious purposes. Additionally, leaks can also occur if these images are stored in a cloud account that later gets hacked. To protect individual’s rights, it is crucial to remove adult media online that has been shared without consent.
Consensual Content
Consensual adult media refers to adult films or explicit photo shoots and modeling in which people agreed to participate in the past. Yet, they may not have anticipated that it would remain online indefinitely, or they might wish to have it removed now. Regardless if they own or not the copyright of these media, it is possible to remove adult media online that was once consented.
How it Impacts Individuals in Their Personal and Professional Life
Discovering leaks or wanting to remove previously consented content impacts an individual’s life, causing emotional distress, humiliation, anxiety, and depression. It can also affect professional life, with reduced professional opportunities. This underscores the importance of having tools designed to remove adult media online.
Steps to Remove Adult Media from Online Platforms
Connecting online is part of today’s life. Almost everyone uses Google daily, whether to research something for work or to see what people are talking about that new restaurant in town. Chances are that you have Googled yourself and have not found anything significant or just links to your social media. However, it is always important to monitor what appears in these searches and protect your reputation. This is crucial especially if you own a business, since clients often research before doing business with anyone. Similarly, if you are a public figure, anything related to you will appear in the search results when people research your name. If you found adult media linked to your name on Google, there are some steps to address the situation.
How to Delete Your Information from Google Searches?
In 2023, Google announced new privacy tools to help you remove results about you. Google has always had policies to remove non-consensual explicit imagery from Search. Now these tools have enabled people to remove adult media or any of their personal, explicit images from their search history.
The process to request to remove adult media is by submitting a request to Google, which must meet the following requirements:
- The imagery shows you nude, in a sexual act, or in an intimate state.
- You did not consent to the imagery or the act and it was made publicly available or the imagery was made available online without your consent.
- You are not being paid for this content online or elsewhere at the moment.
You must submit all the images and web URLs with your personal information that you want Google to review for removal from Search results, as Google only reviews the URLs submitted in the form.
If your request is approved, and an image is removed under this policy, the URL will continue to exist, but will no longer appear on Google Search results.
However, the adult media may still exist online. What will happen after Google approves your request, is that it will remove the adult media from Search.
If You Own the Copyright of the Adult Media
If your request does not align with Google guidelines, there is another option. If you hold the copyright of the adult media – meaning you were the one who took the images – you can seek to remove adult media online under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The easiest approach to do it is to check if the website provides a form for DMCA takedown requests. You can find it by searching the website’s name followed by the term “DMCA” on Google, and that will take you to the procedure or online form.
If there is no form or any other information on the website, the steps to send a legally effective DMCA takedown notice to remove adult media online are:
- To identify who is the DMCA agent responsible
- To provide to a service provider’s designated agent in writing the following, as required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A):
- Your physical or digital signature, or from a person authorized to act on your behalf.
- Identification of the specific adult media.
- Identification of the material to be removed, along with details to help the service provider locate it (such as the website URL).
- Information to allow the service provider to contact the complainant (address, telephone number, and e-mail address).
- A declaration from the complainant asserting a good faith belief that the use of the adult media is not authorized by the copyright holder.
- A statement confirming that the information is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complainant is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder.
If You Do Not Own the Copyright of the Adult Media
If obtaining the copyright is not possible, there are some other options to consider to remove adult media online:
- Contact the websites: Reach out to the websites directly and kindly inform them that your adult media is available online. Request that they take it down. If the original site removes the content, it will no longer show up on search engines like Google or other social media platforms.
- Reverse SEO (Suppression): this technique suppresses the negative content by pushing it down in the search engine result pages by ranking your other favorable content above it. That means new content about you will have to be generated and posted with a certain frequency, to make the other content less visible. As much as it can be effective, it requires time and resources to be implemented.
When to Seek Legal Counsel for Removing Adult Media Online
When trying to remove adult media online, seeking legal professionals who can provide valuable guidance is often advantageous. An attorney can assist you throughout the process, even prior to initiating a lawsuit. If you are thinking about pursuing legal action, collect all evidence – screenshots and links – before they may not be accessible. Remember that filing a lawsuit should generally be considered a last resort because of the potential time and costs involved.
Filing a Civil Lawsuit
In the United States, states have their own legal frameworks, but typical bases for filing a civil lawsuit often include issues such as copyright violations, breaches of privacy, and claims related to emotional distress.
You may get a court order with the lawsuit for platforms to remove adult media online and collect monetary damages.
Filing a Criminal Complaint
If your adult media is shared online without your consent, it is considered revenge porn and a crime. In criminal cases, the state is the one in control and violators can face jail time and significant fines. Filing a criminal complaint will help remove adult media online and hold offenders accountable.
In 2023, a woman in Texas was awarded $1.2 billion in a case against Pornhub, MindGeek, and her abuser, who was accused of having profited from sharing her private images on the company’s online platforms.
Strengthen your online reputation with digital presence.
Removing negative content online is one of the easiest ways to restore your online reputation.
Preventing and Managing Adult Media Online
To prevent having to remove adult media online in the future, some precautions include:
- Trust the person you are sharing your adult media with.
- If you are in doubt, do not share.
- Do not keep adult media on a cloud service, or any device connected to the internet.
- Never show your face when sharing adult media.
When you have removed adult media online, the next step will be to protect your digital footprint and online reputation continuously. This means using the internet responsibly and with care. Be cautious with what you post on social media, and constantly monitor what appears in search results about your name.
Use tools – like Google Alerts – to monitor for adult media associated with your name online. You can set up an alert by inputting your name and related terms in search results.
Conclusion
Having adult media online has severe impacts on one’s personal and professional life. However, there are effective strategies to remove adult media online and protect an individual’s reputation. Adopting precautions are an essential step in preventing these media from appearing online again.
Our reputation is everything. But misinformation spreads quickly on the internet – whether it is true or false. More than ever, taking much care of our online postings should be done along with protecting our digital reputation.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How long does it take to remove adult media online?
It may take weeks or months to remove all the content from the internet. It depends on online content available, and which platforms it was posted on.
2. How do social media platforms approach adult media removal?
Each platform has its own policies, and privacy tools. X has recently updated their policy to allow users to post consensual adult content, but platforms are usually very strict when it comes to leaked and nonconsensual images.
3. How much does it cost to remove all adult media from the internet?
It is also going to depend on how many websites and platforms your content has been found and how much resource it was needed to take it down.
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