What to do if someone sends out your intimate photos online? Russian law

No matter how a person obtained your intimate or revealing content – whether you voluntarily sent it or he/she took it without permission, in Russia, it is considered a crime under part 1 of Art. 137 of the Criminal Code, that is, “Privacy violation”. Privacy violation refers to the illegal collection or distribution of information about the private life of a person, constituting their personal or family secret, without their consent, or communication of this information in a public speech, public work, or mass media.
The Article provides for the punishment in the form of a fine (up to 200,000 rubles) or imprisonment (up to 2 years) with deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities for up to three years.

When does this article apply? Usually, it happens like this: a boy and a girl were dating, at some point the relationship went wrong, they broke up, and out of anger and disappointment, one of the parties begins to send out explicit photos of the other party, which they had got for personal use, on the Net.
Sometimes, this leaking is accompanied by outright extortion, i.e. under the threat of distribution of such intimate photos, the person demands money or material values.

Such a criminal case can be initiated at the request of the victim him- of herself
by the investigative committee in case of the distribution of the explicit content to third parties. However, if it was publicly posted and law enforcement finds it out, a crime report is not even necessary.

Given that this is evidence of a crime is the media, the main thing you definitely should take case of is to secure the evidence.

How can this be done? Of course it will be perfect if the suspect is called to the investigative committee and their phone is confiscated, the phone is examined and this information is found there. That is, the fact of distribution of the photos or videos somewhere in social networks is confirmed. But this is a perfect option, which rarely happens in real life.

How can you try to make things better?

Visit a notary for drawing up a notarial protocol. The procedure is as follows: you come to the notary and provide them with your cell phone, social network data, login and password, after which the notary, using the data provided, examines your page on social networks and draws up a notarial protocol.

In this protocol, the notary indicates when and under what circumstances this Internet resource was examined, what was found on it, while the notary takes a screenshot of these pictures. If it concerns a video, then they record a video of this source, after which it is drawn up in a protocol with photo and video recordings attached. After that, this evidence can be presented to law enforcement agencies. This is what depends on you.

In the future, the investigative committee will have to work with such a protocol and evidence. But in practice, the following sentences are passed: in one case, the courts impose a fine of 25,000 rubles, in another case, 160 hours of community services. Punishments in the form of imprisonment rarely imposed, but the very fact of criminal prosecution will always negatively affect the personal characteristics and history of the guilty person.



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