Badass Army: revenge-porn survivors teach each other digital and legal self-defense

Battling Against Demeaning & Abusive Selfie Sharing (AKA the Badass Army) is an activist group founded by revenge porn survivor Katelyn Bowden to offer self-defense training against the tactics of traffickers in "involuntary pornography," particularly the loathsome denizens of Anon-IB.


The group offers training in operational security and legal countermeasures to remove revenge porn, and lobbies for laws to help combat revenge porn. They also have arrangements with contingency lawyers who will represent people who appear in revenge porn on a no-win/no-fee basis.


Badass also finds ways to identify the people uploading revenge porn, including with so-called grabbers, tools that can reveal someone's IP address. Bowden said she has unmasked around 150 people. Sometimes the group may pass details to law enforcement or use the information for legal cases. Most of the time, these sort of people go on a list.

"We would eventually like to release the list somehow; we're still figuring out how we can do that without creating vigilantism and chaos," Bowden said. Security analyst Einar Otto Stangvik, who previously provided this reporter with a list of Anon-IB user IP addresses, has helped the group identify offenders.

Badass Army

The 'Badass Army' is Training Revenge Porn Victims to Fight Back [Joseph Cox/Motherboard]