Dutch authorities have seized control of revenge porn site Anon-IB, according to a report from Motherboard. Currently, the website redirects to a Dutch police force location with an image that says, “Cybercrime teams from the Dutch police have seized the Anon-IB forum in an ongoing investigation concerning criminal offenses. More information concerning this investigation will be made available on April 26, 2018 on www.politie.nl.”
A spokesperson for Politie — the Dutch police force — told Motherboard that at this time, there are no Anon-IB administrators that have been arrested but some users of the website have been arrested and brought in.
Basically, what happened on Anon-IB is that users can go to the website to share nude photos, or “wins” as they’re called, with other users. Some even requested additional images and different sections, and even had threads that allowed visitors to focus on specific countries, states or even as specific as universities. To give you an idea of how bad things were, The Daily Beast reported IP addresses that were linked to the US Navy, the US Senate, the Department of Energy and even the Executive Office of the President. These IP addresses were used to make posts on Anon-IB.
In a statement, Katelyn Bowden, creator of the anti-revenge porn group BADASS, told Motherboard, “We at BADASS, are so thrilled to see that a law enforcement agency has heard our pleas, and has finally done something against this website. Anon-IB was a cancer on the internet, and needed to be removed. We are immeasurably grateful to the Dutch police and all parties who had a hand in getting Anon-IB shut down.”