IsAnyoneUp.com screenshot
The founder of an infamous “revenge porn” website, which published naked photographs of spurned ex-girlfriends on the internet, has been arrested by the FBI on hacking charges.
Hunter Moore, 27, often described as “the most hated man on the internet”, is alleged to have hacked into personal email accounts to steal nude photographs of women to post online. A second man, Charles Evens, 25, was also arrested over the allegations.
The pair face charges of conspiracy, computer hacking, and aggravated identity theft, and if found guilty they could spend more than a decade in jail.
According to the federal indictment, Moore allegedly paid Evens large sums of money to illegally hack into victims’ email accounts and steal explicit photographs for the purposes of publishing them online for “revenge”.
Evens pleaded not guilty before a federal judge, but Moore has not entered a plea and remains in custody in Northern California.
Between 2010 and 2012, Moore earned his reputation as the internet’s most hated man for running “revenge porn” website IsAnyoneUp.com, which allowed users to upload photographs of others, which were commonly nude pictures of ex-girlfriends and the result of sexting the wrong person. Moore reportedly made around $20,000 (£12,000) per month from this website which he described to the BBC as just monetising other people’s mistakes.
After mounting pressure, Moore eventually sold the website to an anti-bullying group in 2012, who promptly shut it down and redirected the traffic to information about cyber-bullying.
Since the closure of IsAnyoneUp.com, California has passed legislation banning similar websites, and making it illegal to post identifiable images of other people online without explicit consent or with the intention of causing them emotional distress. Those who fall foul of this law could find themselves with six months in jail and a $1,000 (£617) fine.
