After a woman was called, her privacy was permanently jeopardized. Users regularly shared social media handles, which led other members to contact her – to amount to intimate images or to send derogatory texts.

Anonymity can be a protective tool for women who navigate online harassment. But it can also be embraced by bad actors who use the same structures to evade accountability.

“It’s ironic,” Miller says. “The privacy structures that women use to protect themselves are turned against them.”

The rise of unmodied spaces such as the abusive telegram groups makes it almost impossible to detect offenders, exposing a systemic failure in law enforcement and regulation. Without clear jurisdiction or supervision, platforms can detect accountability.

Sophie Mortimer, manager of the UK-based revenge porn Helpline, warned that Telegram has become one of the biggest threats to online safety. She says that the British charity’s reports to telegram of non -consensual intimate footage are ignored. “We will see them as not our requests,” she says. However, Telegram says it received only ‘about 10 piece of content’ from the revenge porn hid, which was all removed. ‘Mortimer has not yet responded to Wired’s questions about the truth of Telegram’s demands.

Despite recent updates to the UK’s online safety law, the legal maintenance of online abuse remains weak. A report from the UK-based charity in October 2024, The Cyber ​​Helpline, shows that cybercrime victims face significant obstacles in reporting abuse, and that justice for online crimes is seven times less likely than for offline- Crimes.

“There is still this long-standing idea that cybercrime has no real consequences,” says Charlotte Hooper, chief operating officer of the cyber helpline, which helps support the victims of cybercrime. “But if you look at victim studies, cybercrime is just that – if not more – positively damaged as physical crime.”

A spokesman for Telegram told Wired that the moderators use “Custom AI and Machine Learning Tools” to remove content that includes the rules of the platform contrary to the rules “including non -consensual pornography and doxing. “

“Due to Telegram’s proactive moderation and response to reports, moderators remove millions of pieces of harmful content every day,” the spokesman said.

Hooper says that digital harassment survivors often change work, move cities or even retreat from public life because of the trauma to be targeted online. The systemic failure to recognize these cases as serious crimes enables offenders to continue with impunity.

As these networks are more intertwined, social media companies have failed to adequately address the gaps in moderation.

Telegram, despite its estimated 950 million monthly active users worldwide, claims to be too small to qualify as a ‘very large online platform’ under the European Digital Service Act, which allows it to spoil certain regulatory investigations. “Telegram takes its responsibilities under the DSA seriously and is in constant communication with the European Commission,” a company spokeswoman said.

In the United Kingdom, several groups in civil society have expressed concern about the use of large private telegram groups, enabling up to 200,000 members. These groups exploit a loophole by working under the guise of ‘private’ communication to bypass legal requirements for removing illegal content, including non -consensual intimate images.

Without stronger regulation, online abuse will continue to develop, adapt to new platforms and investigate the investigation.

The digital spaces intended to protect privacy are now incubating its most invasive offenses. These networks don’t just grow – they adjust, spread over platforms and learn how to evade accountability.