Revenge Porn: Legal Protection & Removal of Material

Time is your greatest enemy. Before you do anything, keep screenshots and the URLs of the posts as evidence. Then we move on two tracks: we file immediate take-down / DMCA requests with the platforms — which, in revenge porn cases, respond within a few hours — and, at the same time, we notify the Cybercrime Division so that it can identify the user who uploaded the material.

You can, because anonymity online is a myth. With the criminal complaint, the prosecutor orders the lifting of confidentiality. The Cybercrime Division asks the platform (for example, Meta, Google) for the logs and the IP address from which the fake profile was created or used. If the IP corresponds to the connection at their home or on their phone, the offender has been identified.

Do not give in to the blackmail, because it never stops. Do not delete a single threatening message, however much it hurts. These messages (on Viber, WhatsApp, Instagram) are the ultimate proof of the blackmail and the threat. We make immediate contact with the authorities so that the in-the-act (flagrante delicto) procedure can be set in motion before he can carry out his threat.

Under the Greek Criminal Code as it now stands, revenge porn is punished severely. If the act was done to cause grave psychological harm or public humiliation, or if it is linked to blackmail, the prison sentences are long. In serious cases — and certainly where the victim was a minor at the time of the recording or the display — the offence becomes a felony carrying an actual custodial sentence of incarceration.

Of course. Beyond the criminal court, we file a claim for damages in the civil courts for the injury to your personality rights and the moral harm. The law obliges the offender to compensate you in money for the damage, and if the photographs affected your work, we also claim for lost earnings.

You are seriously at risk if you do not grasp the difference. Her sending them to you willingly (consensual receipt) gives you no right at all to show them or send them to third parties (non-consensual dissemination). The law punishes dissemination. The defence line focuses on proving, through the technical analysis of your devices, that you never sent, posted, or shared the material.

False complaints born of obsession or revenge do happen. Your defence lies in your digital traces. You hand your phone and computer to your lawyer at once for a technical examination (digital forensics) by our own expert, so that it can be formally certified that no such material is stored, deleted, or sent. At the same time, we preserve the message history showing the threat of a false complaint, so as to establish the motive and to turn the tables with a charge of false accusation.

If you simply say it in words, it will be hard — it sounds like the classic excuse. For the claim to be accepted, we have to prove it technically. We appoint a technical adviser (an expert) to examine the device for malicious software (malware/trojan) and for account breaches from another IP (hacking), or we produce a declaration of the loss/theft of the phone at a time before the leak.

Do not do it — you will make your position worse. First, the Cybercrime Division has forensic software (such as Cellebrite) that recovers deleted files even after a format. Second, if it is found that you wiped evidence (destruction of evidence), you will be treated as a suspect for a cover-up, and the odds of pre-trial detention until the trial rise sharply.

Yes, the danger is real. With the recent changes to the Greek Criminal Code, the non-consensual dissemination of personal sexual material is treated as a highly reprehensible offence. If it is held that there was intent and a purpose of destroying the victim, the sentence may not be suspended. Our strategy is to downgrade the charge, to prove the absence of any purpose to harm, and to fight for mitigating circumstances or the conversion of the sentence.