Olivia (not her real name) received an email from Snapchat that said her account had been hacked and accessed six times in three days. She thought nothing more of it and ignored it, until she started receiving strange messages from someone. 

Months after receiving the email from Snapchat, Olivia started getting messages from accounts with names she didn’t recognise. She was shocked to open the messages and see sensitive pictures of herself that she had saved on Snapchat, no one else should be able to see them. The messages were asking her “How much to see more?”. Olivia recalls being shocked, she only told her partner and a close friend who encouraged her to go to the police but she couldn’t bring herself to speak to a stranger and tell them what was happening, she was embarrassed and traumatized.

The messages continued with new accounts messaging her with different names, multiple people had her photos and she began desperately searching online to find out what she should do now. Olivia found The Cyber Helpline at two in the morning, she read through the advice on the website and then contacted the Helpline. She typed in everything that had been happening and heard back straight away. 

The volunteer from The Cyber Helpline reassured Olivia that what was happening to her was a crime and advised that she reported the crime to the police. They pointed Olivia in the direction of reporting the crime online, as Olivia felt distressed at the idea of reporting the crime over the phone or at a police station. Olivia filed the report and remembers that when she pressed ‘submit’ a new page came up telling her that if her report was a crime she would receive a Crime Reference Number. Olivia recollects reading this and wondering if she would get a Crime Reference Number, and whether what was happening to her really was a crime. 

Not long after, a detective was assigned to her case. In the meantime,the abuse continued and her partner was now receiving messages with pictures of her and offering him pictures of other people in exchange for more images of Olivia. Olivia was terrified of what was next, whether the photos would be posted online and what impact they would have on her career. 

The police used the initial email from Snapchat, finding that it contained the IP address and name of the device that had been used to hack into Olivia’s account, they contacted the service provider and confirmed who the perpetrator was. It was a close friend of the family. The images had never been shared with other people, but the perpetrator had used multiple accounts to appear to be more than one person and scare Olivia. 

The police asked the perpetrator how he had got into the account and he admitted finding a website that had the first three letters of peoples password, you could either guess the rest of it or had the option to pay a small fee to receive the full password. 

This often happens when a website provider has been a victim of a data breach, where a cybercriminal exposes information such as the passwords of its users. They often will then publish the passwords online for sale for a small amount of money. When we reuse passwords, the password for the site that has been breached can be used to access other accounts too.

Olivia has now been able to secure her accounts and is grateful that the perpetrator is facing punishment for his actions, rather than Olivia having to make changes to her life because of the actions of someone else.

If you need help with a similar issue then see our Hacked Social Media guide and our Intimate Image Abuse guide - or get help here.