Sex Worker Search

The ability to get content removed from the internet is a handy skill to have as sex worker.

I often see people requesting help and advice on Reddit and on sex worker group chats on WhatsApp when their images and or contact details are appearing somewhere and they want them taken down.

Scraper Sites

This can happen when scraper sites use a bot to extract details from other websites. Scraper sites are escort directories with a business model of scraping other directories ads to make their own site look popular in the hopes of generating traffic and getting people to pay to register.

Outdated Ads

It can also happen with old, outdated ads. eg when someone has registered, created an ad and then lost, or forgotten, their login details and lost access to the email they registered with so they can’t reset their password.

Stolen Content

In some cases our images and ad copy can be outright stolen by other sex workers, or scammers pretending to be sex workers.

Copyright of Images

The owner of the copyright of your images is probably the photographer under UK law. Check what the applicable law is in your location. If you’re getting new pictures taken, you might want to ask the photographer to assign you as the sole owner of the copyright. Here’s the form you can ask them to sign in order to do this.

Takedown Requests

Whatever the reason, if our images and personal details are appearing somewhere we don’t want them to appear, there are some useful techniques that can assist in getting them taken down.

Google

To remove a website from Google search results, you can use the Google Search Console. First, verify ownership of the website through the console. Then, go to the “Removals” tool within the console to request the temporary removal of specific URLs. You can also add a “noindex” meta tag to the pages you want to exclude from search results, which instructs Google not to index those pages. Additionally, you can block Google’s web crawler (Googlebot) using the “robots.txt” file. For immediate issues, use the “Remove Outdated Content” tool in Google’s support to request removal of cached versions of pages.

Google Images

To remove an image of yourself from Google Images, you need to first identify the source of the image and contact the website owner to request its removal, as Google cannot remove images directly from third-party sites. Once the image is removed from the source, it will eventually disappear from Google Images. If you are unable to contact the site owner or the content is inappropriate, you can use the Google “Remove Outdated Content” tool to expedite the removal of the image from search results, or submit a legal removal request if it violates privacy or other policies. For specific cases like sensitive personal information or copyright violations, Google has dedicated forms to address these concerns.

Google also has processes for the following =

• Remove explicit or intimate personal images from Google Search results
• Remove explicit non-consensual fake imagery from Google Search results
• Remove association with irrelevant sexual content from Google search results for my name
• Remove personally identifiable information (PII) or doxxing content from Google Search results
• Remove content about me on sites with exploitative removal practices from Google Search results

Yahoo

To remove an image of yourself or other content from Yahoo, you’ll need to first get the image or content taken down from the source website hosting it, as Yahoo cannot remove anything directly from third-party sites. Contact the webmaster or site owner and request the image be removed. If you are unable to contact the website owner or need to expedite the process, Yahoo offers a Yahoo Search Content Removal Tool to report outdated or inappropriate content and request its removal from the search results.

Bing

As per google and Yahoo, contact the webmaster of the site where your image or content appears first. Failing that, they have a removal tool.

Duckduckgo

Unlike other search engines, because of the way their results are sourced (mainly from Bing), DuckDuckGo does not have a specific removal tool, so the only way to get the image removed from search results is to ensure it’s taken down from the hosting site. I highly recommend Duckduckgo since, unlike google and co, it doesn’t track you and it is designed to protect our privacy.

Reverse Image Search Engines and Facial Recognition Like Pimeyes

Pimeyes and other reverse image search and facial recognition tools hold databases of millions of images which are then “fingerprinted” by their algorithm. The exact measurements and proportions of faces are encoded in such a way that you can upload a picture of someone’s face, and it will return results showing the closest matches. These can be scarily accurate. A client could take your face picture from an ad and it will show him pics of you at your tenth birthday party from your mum’s Facebook or from the background of some tourists’ pictures where you were walking past with your head half turned 200 metres away in the background.

You can get yourself removed case by case via their manual exclusion process or opt-out altogether.

They require a current selfie and identity document (with sensitive information hidden).

WHOIS

If you can’t find an email address on the site you want to contact, or by simply googling the name of the site and the words “contact email”, about a takedown request, try doing a WHOIS Search. Just copy and paste the domain name into the search field and in some cases it will give you a contact email.

Cloudflare

A lot of sites use Cloudflare which will obsure their contact details from Whois searches. In this case, if you do a Whois search and you see that they’re using Cloudflare, you can submit an abuse report to Cloudflare.

WHOIS Hosting

It’s a good idea to CC in the contact email of the hosting provider of the website your issuing a takedown request to. You can often find out who their hosting is with using a WHOIS Hosting lookup tool. eg Hosting Checker. Publishing non consensual intimate media and then ignoring takedown requests is a big no no and puts their site in breach of all sorts of national and international regulations. Some sites just don’t care but if they think their hosting provider might terminate their agreement and force them to rebuild their site somewhere else, that’s an excellent additional incentive to get off their arses and action your takedown request.

GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a comprehensive data privacy law in the European Union that aims to protect individuals’ personal data and privacy. In the context of websites hosting non-consensual intimate media (NCIM), GDPR plays a significant role because such media often contains personal data, like images or videos revealing someone’s identity without their consent. GDPR requires websites to have a lawful basis for processing personal data, which is not present in cases of NCIM since it violates privacy and consent. Affected individuals have rights under GDPR to demand the removal of their data (including intimate media), report violations, and pursue legal action against websites that fail to comply, potentially resulting in significant fines and penalties for the violators.

DMCA

In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is often used in situations involving non-consensual intimate media (NCIM), although its primary purpose is to address copyright infringement. The DMCA allows individuals to request the removal of content from websites if they own the copyright to the material, which can sometimes apply to NCIM cases if the person depicted took the photos or videos themselves. However, the DMCA does not specifically address privacy or consent issues, so its application to NCIM is limited to cases where copyright ownership is clear. For broader protections, U.S. states have enacted “revenge porn” laws that specifically criminalize the distribution of intimate media without consent, and these laws provide a more direct legal remedy for victims by allowing them to pursue criminal charges or civil claims against individuals or platforms hosting such content.

Revenge Porn Laws

It’s worth mentioning the words “Revenge Porn” somewhere in your takedown request as an email with these words included may put the fear of litigation into their legal department more so than without. Revenge porn laws are designed to criminalize the sharing of non-consensual intimate media, typically distributed to harm or embarrass someone. In the U.S., these laws vary significantly by state, with most making it a criminal offense to distribute explicit images or videos without consent, allowing victims to pursue both criminal charges and civil damages. However, the absence of a comprehensive federal law creates inconsistencies across states. In the UK, the distribution of revenge porn is a criminal offense under the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, which specifically targets the sharing of private, sexual photos or films without consent. Similarly, in the EU, various countries have implemented national laws to address revenge porn specifically and mentioning whichever law is relevant to your location and/or the location where the website is based could help to light a fire under them.

Watermarks

Watermarking your images is a good way to prevent people from stealing them and using them for nefarious purposes eg deposit scammers.

If you have your own personal website, I highly recommend putting your logo, including your website URL on as a large, semi transparent watermark on all your images.

GIMP is excellent, free software that can be used to easily achieve this.

Standard Email Formats

If you can’t find the contact email for a website, here are some common email formats you can try based on the domain name (replace “websitename.com” with the actual domain):

1. [email protected]
2. [email protected]
3. [email protected]
4. [email protected]
5. [email protected]
6. [email protected]
7. [email protected]
8. [email protected]
9. [email protected]
10. [email protected] (or “inquiries” for US spelling)
11. [email protected]
12. [email protected]
13. [email protected]
14. [email protected]
15. [email protected]

These are standard formats. CC them all in and at least one of them might connect you with the correct person or department on the site.

Sex Worker Search is a Search Engine, Not a Scraper Site, But Please Contact Me Anytime to Remove Your Site from Search Results

A scraper site, extracts ads and images to create their own directory listings by re-using other sites’ ad copy and images.

Sex Worker Search doesn’t have any directory listings, doesn’t contain any ad copy and doesn’t display images.

Sex Worker search only displays site titles and taglines with the URLs of independent sex worker websites.

In the same way that Google, Bing, Yahoo and Duckduckgo index websites in their search results, that’s what Sex Worker Search does.

ie SWS is a search engine. Not a directory.

Removing Your Site From Sex Worker Search Index

If you’ve retired, or you’re on hiatus, or if for any reason you decide you don’t want your site to be indexed in search results on Sex Worker Search any more, please send me an email anytime and I’ll happily remove your website from search results. It will only ever take me up to one day to do this. Usually I’ll get it done almost instantly.

Takedown Request Template

Subject: Takedown Request: Unauthorized Use of My Personal Information and Images

Dear [Website/Platform Name] Abuse Team,

I am writing to formally request the immediate removal of a profile on your website (link: [Insert URL of the profile here]) which contains my personal information and images, uploaded and published without my consent. This action violates multiple legal standards, including but not limited to the GDPR, DMCA, and laws surrounding non-consensual pornography (commonly known as “revenge porn”).

Grounds for Takedown:

1. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
   As a resident of the [insert your country/region], I am protected by the GDPR, which mandates that my personal data, including any information and images that identify me, may not be published or distributed without my explicit consent. The profile on your site breaches GDPR Articles 6 and 9, which outline conditions for lawful data processing, as no consent was provided for the use of my personal data.
2. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
   The images included in the profile are my intellectual property and are used without my permission. Under the DMCA, I request that you remove all unauthorized copies of these images immediately. Please consider this letter as a formal DMCA takedown notice.

• Description of copyrighted work: The unauthorized images are identifiable as photographs of me, depicted in a manner that infringes upon my copyright.
• Location of infringing material: [Insert URL of the profile/page where the images appear]

3. Non-Consensual Pornography / Revenge Porn Laws
   The images and information being shared without my consent are of a sensitive and explicit nature. In accordance with [insert relevant revenge porn or non-consensual pornography laws in your country/region], sharing these materials without my explicit consent is illegal. The unauthorized distribution of this content constitutes a violation of my privacy and is a form of harassment.

Request for Immediate Action

I request that you:

• Remove all images, content, and any personal information related to me from your website immediately.
• Confirm in writing that this has been done and that no further distribution of the content will occur.
• Provide information about the uploader of the content and any actions taken against their account, if applicable.

I trust that you will take immediate action to comply with this request. Failure to act promptly may result in me pursuing further legal action.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this serious matter.

Sincerely,