By Heather McNeill
A young Perth woman has described the moment her "heart sank" after she discovered social photos from her Facebook page had been altered and published on porn sites.
Noelle Martin, 22, said she was 'reverse Google image searching' herself three years ago when she came across an image of her face, taken from a picture of her with friends at the Claremont Hotel, photoshopped onto the body of a naked woman.
"I really was shocked, I felt like I wanted to vomit, my heart sank," she said.
"They had taken ordinary photos - nothing pornographic, nothing sexually explicit - from my social media... and put my face on naked bodies.
Noelle Martin has been targeted by parasite porn.
"There's quite a few out there that have been morphed."
Ms Martin is a victim of a growing issue called parasite porn, where someone takes another person's image and uses it in a sexually explicit way, without their permission.
The law student, who is currently studying in Sydney, has gone public with her three-year battle to remove the photos, to reclaim her identity and warn others of the dangers.
"I feel like this does happen with celebrities, and it's disgusting that it does, but they have the platform and people know them, so they know it's obviously not them in the photos," she said.
Parasite porn has taken images of Ms Martin's face and attached it to pornographic images without her consent.
"But when this happens to an ordinary girl... when people search for your name and it comes up, that is what will define you and people don't know that obviously this is a troll that's done this.
"I need to get the word out, especially for my future employability, they just tarnished my name and my image and I need to fight back."
Ms Martin said she had had some success asking webmasters to remove her image, but the photos would pop up on another site a week later.
Ms Martin said people often assumed if their Facebook is private, they would not be a victim, but the people who took her photos were relentless in their targeting of her, and even set up fake 'cat-fish' accounts to try and befriend her.
"They would get some of the photos through my friend's accounts, and they'd also be able to search through event and club photos so they knew how to find me," she said.
"I had experiences where whoever they were would be adding my friends, and you'd find patterns because you'd get someone adding me and then adding a friend from Perth and then adding a friend in Melbourne that had no relation to Perth.
"They know what university I go to, they know I'm in a law society, they know I go to the university bar. I didn't know they'd been following me for a long time."
Australian authorities were unable to help Ms Martin, whose name and personal details were often published alongside the altered images.
Many sites posted unaltered photos of Ms Martin from her Facebook page, alongside the explicitly altered photo - to create the false identity.
One labelled their images of her, "Noelle Martin huge tits Aussie student."
In a report by 7.30, Safety Net Australia Project spokeswoman, Karen Bentley said the number of people reporting cyber crimes similar to Ms Martin's had quadrupled in recent months.
"Some of those sites, they're overseas, they're not on the jurisdiction that the legalisation covers so it's really hard to try prove where the hosting company is and what power you have over that company if it is based in an overseas jurisdiction," she said.
Ms Martin believed most of the sites were hosted from the United States.
She said she had had some success asking webmasters to remove her image, but even when they agreed, the photos would pop up on another site a week later.
"It's just a constant battle to do this," she said.
One webmaster even tried to blackmail Ms Martin by offering to take down her 'morphed' photos, if she sent him a photo of her breasts for his "private collection".
Most Australian states are in the process of establishing their own 'revenge porn' laws following recommendations from a national senate inquiry held earlier this year.
In Western Australia, people who publish photos of a former partner to humiliate or blackmail them, could face up to two years in jail, under new laws to be introduced by the state government.
But the laws do not relate to parasite porn, leaving people like Ms Martin, vulnerable to strangers who seek to sexually distort her image.'
"I don't want this attention, I just want to live my life and hopefully be a lawyer one day," she said.
"I don't like this [media attention] ... but I think the issue is a lot bigger than me.
"I feel like people don't know about this and that's the danger."