The young girl in the footage looks no older than 15. She’s oblivious to the person following closely behind.
His covert camera is trained on the back of her yoga shorts, recording close-up from intimate angles as she and her friends make their way around a UK shopping center.
In another clip a young woman is followed through the same mall. A camera secretly films up her skirt as she looks at clothes on a rail.
Last month, Metro exposed this kind of invasive and illegal content as part of an investigation into the disturbing world of ‘creep shooters’, who film and sell upskirting footage online, as part of avast international ‘violation economy’.
However, this latest footage is not from the same website – it’s from another, which we discovered is just a tiny cog in a complicated web of connecting platforms targeting women and girls across the world.
Metro’s original investigation has even made it onto one creep-shotting ‘discussion’ forum, with one account saying members in the UK need to ‘wait for this to die down’.
Inside the creepshot matrix
Using open-source intelligence techniques, Metro has been able to identify two prolific creators of this perverse content.
The men have filmed victims in locations including Westfield Stratford, Westfield Shepherd’s Bush and Harold Hill, and are linked to a specific website and often ‘collaborate’, filming the same victims together from different angles.
We’re unable to name them, as both have been arrested and are awaiting trial.
While the site they are associated with, which we revealed in our report last month, is no longer publicly accessible, a large tranche of their material is easily available via third-party sites.
And these men are just the tip of the iceberg.
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As our investigation expanded we uncovered a network of creators, websites and Telegram channels, in and around the capital and the wider UK, which linked to other sellers based around Europe and the US.
Analysis of locations and timestamps on some clips shows women being followed by creep shooters for up to 30 minutes.
In one reel, being sold for $40, a lone woman is followed around London until she is filmed walking down a quiet suburban side street, apparently on her way home. Another video follows a group of three friends between Elizabeth Line stations, and onto a bus.
One screenshot shows one of the girls asleep on the bus as the anonymous camera person covertly films her.
Using software provided by intelligence firm OSINT Industries, we traced usernames and connections between creators, sellers and sites across the marketplace.
On one site, we found 1,975 posts signposting clips from one of the London-based creators we identified. The posts had amassed almost one million reads.
The site also offered each of the videos for $10, with payment requested in bitcoin via an active Telegram channel.
On another website, videos created by the second suspect we identified were still being sold for $30 with updates in February last year.
How do upskirting websites work?
These videos are packaged, edited and circulated through an underground marketplace that consists of networks of shifting websites and Telegram channels.
Some of the sites even have customer service email accounts and membership clubs. While the precise route varies, our investigation found a common pattern:
- A target is identified, always a young woman dressed in tight clothing. The victim is followed and covertly filmed from intimate angles.
- The videos are edited and often branded with its creator’s watermark. Content creators use pseudonyms to distinguish themselves and their videos. Some creators specialise in certain niches. For example, some get close behind their victims and expose themselves as they are filming or simulate sex acts.
- Videos are uploaded onto creator websites and offered for sale, sometimes as individual clips, often as part of a package of clips. We have chosen not to name the sites we’ve investigated, to avoid signposting traffic to them.
- Buyers browsing websites are offered previews of the clips for sale. Preview folders are frequently stored on a specific Russian cloud-storage platform.
- Customers are directed to Telegram channels where payments and memberships are arranged. Payment platforms such as PayPal and Venmo are used and in many cases, payment is made in bitcoin.
- These websites are frequently closed and reopened under different but similar names. Customers and members are alerted to changes, updates and content drops via Telegram channels.
- The videos are also listed on third-party aggregate sites offering thousands of clips for sale from creep shooters around the world. Videos are categorised by creator handles.
Where are ‘creep-shotters’ targeting?
Criminals creating this content frequently focus on busy locations such as shopping centers and public transport, where they can get close to their victims and disappear into crowds.
Other favoured locations include carnivals, fairs, concerts and conventions.
Several videos we examined appear to have been filmed at a cosplay event. Others were recorded at Notting Hill Carnival.
The scale of the problem was recently highlighted internationally, when women using an amusement ride at Munich’s Oktoberfest were offered free cycling shorts after an investigation uncovered more than 32,000 voyeuristic videos linked to the attraction. Many showed women’s underwear as their dresses were lifted by the spinning Teufelsrad, or Devil’s Wheel.
The market exposed by our investigation, which is now being looked into by British police forces, is vast, organized and established.
Beyond the sexually invasive and predatory nature of the footage, the videos can reveal victims’ faces, friends, shopping habits and journeys.
Once a video enters this marketplace, it can be copied, repackaged and resold, potentially remaining online indefinitely.
Most disturbingly, many of the women and girls caught on camera will never know it happened at all.
Detective Superintendent Dan Thompson, the Met’s lead for Violence Against Women and Girls said: ‘All women should feel safe while travelling across London, and we recognize the concern that the existence of such websites will cause.
‘Nobody should have to live with the fear of being subjected to this intimidating behavior.
‘We are working hard to prevent offenses like this through increased proactive operations that use plain-clothes officers to identify predatory behavior in public spaces and stop dangerous offenders in their tracks.
‘Over the last six months, charges and outcomes for offenses of violence against women and girls have risen by 20 percent.’
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