NBC 5 will have Katie Kim's full investigative report tonight at 10 p.m.
The NBC 5 Investigates team has found an anonymous website where users ask for and trade female nude images of what appear to be former high school students.
It involves dozens of Chicago-area high schools, former students and hundreds of nude photos. Many of the women have no idea they’re exposed.
The NBC 5 team monitored the website for two months and identified at least 67 secret threads bearing the logos of high schools in the Chicago area and Illinois. Users on these threads solicit and barter explicit photos.
The website is infamously known as the dumping ground for stolen nude photos of celebrities and female Marines. Now, law enforcement officials say there’s another disturbing trend.
Users on these anonymous threads ask for women’s photos by name and graduating class, almost like playing cards. One woman who did not want to be identified said she graduated from a local high school in the western suburbs a few years ago and had no idea her intimate photo was splashed across the website.
"I’m a person. you know," she said. "I’m a human being, and I feel like a lot of people on this website don’t even consider that."
Women with photos on the site, as well as law enforcement, victims advocates and legal experts all want to get out a message that these kinds of image boards exist and what the real dangers are.
Watch the full story tonight at 10 p.m. on NBC 5.
