{"id":571846,"date":"2026-04-08T13:35:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T13:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/571846\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T13:35:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T13:35:18","slug":"men-are-buying-hacking-tools-to-use-against-their-wives-and-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/571846\/","title":{"rendered":"Men Are Buying Hacking Tools to Use Against Their Wives and Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thousands of men are members of Telegram<\/a> groups and channels that advertise and sell hacking and surveillance services that can be used to harass friends, wives and girlfriends, and former partners, new research has uncovered. The findings, from a European nonprofit group, also say that the communities are involved in extensive trading, selling, and promotion of a huge variety of abusive content, including nonconsensual intimate images of women, so-called nudifying<\/a> services<\/a>, plus folders of images that sellers claim include child sexual abuse material and depictions of incest and rape.<\/p>\n

Over six weeks earlier this year, researchers at the algorithmic auditing group AI Forensics analyzed nearly 2.8 million messages<\/a> sent across 16 Italian and Spanish Telegram communities that are regularly posting abusive content targeting women and girls. More than 24,000 members of the Telegram groups and channels took part in posting 82,723 images, videos, and audio files over the course of the study, the analysis says. Many posts target celebrities and influencers, but men in the groups also frequently victimize women they know.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tend to forget that most victims are ordinary women who sometimes don\u2019t even know that their pictures are shared or manipulated in these types of channels,\u201d says Silvia Semenzin, a researcher at AI Forensics who previously exposed Italian Telegram channels engaging in similar behavior as far back as 2019<\/a>. \u201cThe majority of this violence is directed towards people who the perpetrators know,\u201d she says, suggesting that Telegram, which has over 1 billion monthly active users, according<\/a> to company founder Pavel Durov, should be subject to stricter regulation and classed as a \u201cvery large online platform\u201d under Europe\u2019s online safety rules<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The findings come as Durov is fighting<\/a> back<\/a> against Russia\u2019s efforts to block the messaging app in that country, which has long positioned itself as a messaging app that allows free speech but has simultaneously been used<\/a> by some to share terrorist<\/a>, sexual abuse<\/a>, and cybercrime materials<\/a>. Durov is under criminal investigation<\/a> in France<\/a> relating to alleged criminal activity taking place on Telegram, although he has consistently denied the allegations.<\/p>\n

A Telegram spokesperson tells WIRED that the company removes \u201cmillions\u201d of pieces of content per day using \u201ccustom AI tools\u201d and has policies in Europe<\/a> that do not allow the promotion of violence, illegal sexual content including nonconsensual imagery, and other content such as doxing and selling illegal goods and services.<\/p>\n

Among the extensive types of abusive content and services observed by the AI Forensics researchers were frequent references to the access, publishing, and doxing of women\u2019s private information, sharing their Instagram or TikTok content, as well as references to spying or hacking. \u201cVictims are often named, tagged, and locatable via shared profile links,\u201d the group\u2019s report says.<\/p>\n

One translated post on Telegram titled \u201cProfessional hacking on commission\u201d claimed to be able to give customers \u201caccess to phone gallery and extraction of photos and videos,\u201d as well as \u201canonymous social media hacking.\u201d Another message says: \u201cI hack and recover any type of social media service. I can spy on your partner’s account. Send me a private message.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the dataset there were more than 18,000 references to spying or spy content. One post reads: \u201cHi, do you have the desire to spy on a girl’s gallery? We sell a bot that does it for info DM.\u201d Meanwhile, users were observed asking if people could find phone numbers connected to Instagram accounts and other requests, \u201cwho exchanges spy photos and videos?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of men are members of Telegram groups and channels that advertise and sell hacking and surveillance services…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,3071,7257,4002,514,7270,35363,1145],"class_list":["post-571846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-crime","tag-cybersecurity","tag-hacking","tag-privacy","tag-security","tag-surveillance","tag-telegram"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}