Warning to parents as schoolgirl photos are stolen by social media predators for porn sites

Who is really looking at your family’s selfies?

Vile internet perverts are snatching photos from schoolgirls’ social media accounts and sharing them on pornographic websites.

Thousands of private snaps of kids are being ogled by online sickos after being harvested from popular networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The photos many selfies in school uniform were originally taken by the youngsters in innocence at home or with friends. But twisted perverts have since poached them to post alongside sordid shots of sex acts.

Our shock investigation found a cache of school pupils’ snaps from primary and secondary schools across the country.

It clearly demonstrates that parents need to be aware of the risks of allowing their children access to the internet, particularly on smartphones and tablets which are almost impossible to supervise.

An Israeli-run website hosting the images also has thousands of photographs of older teenagers and adults stolen from their social media accounts, all with provocative titles and tags and all taken without their owners’ knowledge.

One of those was 23-year-old Heather Adair, who’s had 18 of her personal photos plundered.

She said: “I feel sick knowing that this has happened. My privacy has been completely invaded and I feel so violated. It’s disgusting. I feel like I can’t even have a life online now because of people doing this.”

Dental nurse Heather of Milngavie, Glasgow, was only made aware she’d been targeted after being contacted by the Sunday Post.

Her pictures were among millions on the website, which is registered to an offshore accountancy business in Cyprus, run from Israel, with its servers located in the Netherlands.

Thousands of Scots schoolkids and adults feature but will be none the wiser to it happening.

Heather said: “It’s worse to think that I don’t even know who it is that’s taken my pictures and shared them in this way. It could even be someone I know, which is even more sickening.

“This isn’t the first time too my photos have been stolen and used on dating websites both here and in Spain.

“But to have them on a pornographic website, where there’s also photos of schoolgirls, makes me want to cry. It’s very upsetting.”

The website contains explicit pornography as well as thousands of nude and clothed photographs of adults. These include women on holiday and with friends, at weddings and even graduation ceremonies.

Even more worrying is the high volume of photos showing young girls in their school uniforms.

In total, our probe found 574 such images of Scottish girls. There were also 731 from Northern Ireland and thousands more of English youngsters.

The majority are selfie-shots originally taken at home, but also include school grounds snaps and holiday photos. In some of the pictures underwear was exposed as well as some bare skin.

Again, these have all been taken directly from private accounts on social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram.

Beneath them, users are urged to “leave a sexy comment”.

Mary Glasgow, Children 1st Director of Children and Family Services, was stunned by our discovery.

She said: “This website illustrates that the internet is a place with real-life consequences that can expose children and young people to a real risk of harm.

“A survey conducted for Children 1st last year revealed that 50% of parents had not set the parental controls on their home computers, smartphones and other home devices capable of online access.

“It’s crucial that parents and carers educate themselves about mobile technology and online communities, and that they support children and young people to use the internet safely.”

A number of disturbing recent high-profile scandals have underlined how easy it is for private photos to be plundered online.

In October, a cache of 200,000 images taken from a mobile app service called Snapchat were posted online.

Snapchat is a device which allows people to send photos to each other which then later self-destruct.

Its design means it is regularly used for sexting or sending explicit snaps.

Cyber hackers, however, were able to use a third-party image-saving service to hive off supposedly private images which were later posted online.

Celebrities including The Hunger Games actress Jennifer Lawrence, 24, pin-up Kelly Brook, 35, and former Coronation Street star Michelle Keegan, 27, have also had their private, often nude, pictures stolen and posted online for all to see by hackers.

Experts say these latest revelations show parents need to be super-vigilant when it comes to their childrens’ use of social media.

Jim Gamble, the former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, said: “Whoever is collecting these images and putting them within the context of this site has a real problem and, in my opinion, an extremely deviant sexual interest in children,” he said.

“If I was to find this on someone’s computer that they were uploading it, and I was still in the police, they would be arrested that day.”

He also pointed out the potential dangers that could have been caused by the images being shared beyond the website.

“If you are saying to me do I think some of these images will end up in paedophile collections, then the answer to that is of course I do, yes,” he said.

The law governing the harvesting of images is seemingly weighted in favour of website owners.

Overseas web servers are largely untouchable by UK law chiefs, to the chagrin of campaigners, police and politicians.

A spokesman for the website (we have deliberately not printed its name) said: “We are not aware of any Scottish schoolgirls on our site.

“If you happen to see those types of pictures you can easily report them. Our policy states that we do not allow pictures of dressed minors.”

Report by Euan McLelland and Gordon Blackstock