Revenge porn has been an important topic over the past year or two and now Microsoft has joined the growing list of companies taking a more active role in purging the Internet of such content. The company is now making much easier for victims of revenge porn to get the content involving them taken down from a variety of Microsoft services, such as Bing and Xbox Live.
When someone shares intimate images of another person online without that person’s consent, the effects can be truly devastating. These gross violations of privacy are commonly (and unartfully) referred to as “revenge porn.” Unfortunately, revenge porn is on the rise across the globe. It can damage nearly every aspect of a victim’s life: relationships, career, social activities. In the most severe and tragic cases, it has even led to suicide. Much needs to be done to address the problem. As a first step, we want to help put victims back in control of their images and their privacy. That’s why Microsoft will remove links to photos and videos from search results in Bing, and remove access to the content itself when shared on OneDrive or Xbox Live, when we are notified by a victim. While people have been able to report to us in the past, we’ve set up a new reporting Web page, available today, to make it easy for victims to let us know about these particular photos and videos. It is available in English now and will be expanded to other languages in the coming weeks. When we remove links or content, we will do so globally.
