After being notified that explicit photos of her had been posted on the revenge porn site Anon ib, she sat frozen as she read the comments of strangers ogling images of her exposed body.

The emotional turmoil that ensued inspired her to take action for other victims.

“You think you hear everyone whispering behind your back. That loneliness is so deafening,” she says.

Like many other posters, the acquaintance who admitted to sharing the photos, after stealing her ex-boyfriend’s phone, included her name and workplace.

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“One of the most disturbing things was the men discussing my supposed sex life. Someone would comment and be like, ‘I’ll pay money to get pictures of that’ and in my head I’m thinking, ‘is he putting a bounty on photos of me?’ What kind of crazy person might go out and just say, ‘I’m gonna rape this girl for money?’ That is a really common thing and it’s terrifying.”

Katelyn lives in Ohio, one of 13 US states that has no laws against this online, predatory behaviour. Despite the confession, the man involved strolled from the police consequence free.

“That should be an open and shut case of sexual abuse. That’s what it felt like to me. I was so ashamed and depressed. Any time someone looked at me for too long I was just like, ‘wow, OK, they’ve seen me naked,’ ” she says.

In the US Bowden is pushing for revenge porn to be made a federal crime and she has created the group BADASS (Babes Against Demeaning and Abusive Selfie Sharing) which provides support for victims and pushes for legal reform.

The group has 530 members.

In the month since its inception she has notified 350 girls and had their photos removed, learning to code and track down serial posters.

When Bowden discovered Australian women on the site, including a niche category depicting indigenous pregnant women, she decided to reach out internationally.

In the US one in 25 people has been a victim of image-based abuse. In Australia it is one in five, according to a study conducted by Melbourne’s RMIT University.

The terminology too is changing from “revenge porn”, to combat a suggestion of victim blaming, to terms such as image based abuse.

With this week’s introduction of the Enhancing Online Safety bill by the Turnbull government, maliciously clicking “send” on that private photo could mean more than just moral bankruptcy.

People charged with sending explicit images in Australia without consent could now be fined up to $105,000, while corporations could face a fine of $525,000, in a bid to hold posters and content-hosting platforms accountable.

It will also allow the Office of the eSafety Commissioner to remove explicit images published online without consent within hours and to prevent them being shared.

Caty Pitt, a 28-year-old from Brisbane, was notified by BADASS about an image circulating on revenge porn sites. The photo was four years old and accompanied by her details, resulting in a storm of men contacting her on social media.

Caty has no idea who initially posted the image but was shocked to find the ensuing obsession with her personal life in the comment threads.

“They knew I had had my baby and at some stage they knew I was pregnant before I had even announced it, so that made me think it’s someone that I know. I was like, ‘how do these people know my life?’

“I was shocked and then angry and frustrated because I wanted to know who it was, but for the life of me, I wasn’t able to figure out who it was,” Caty says.

Sydney cyber security expert and consultant Leonie Smith, also known as The Cyber Safety Lady, says removing pictures and shutting down revenge porn sites can be next to impossible. “It’s like a game of Whac-A-Mole. As soon as you get rid of one thing over here it pops up over there.

“It’s very difficult to shut down sites when you’ve got them happening in international locations that have different laws.”

She says that common among these illegally shared images are victims who aren’t even aware they are being photographed.

“People used to be called perverts and peeping toms, you were seen as the lowest scum of the earth. How has that perception changed to the point where we have 16- and 17-year-old kids, high-fiving and betting each other for photos, where it’s a badge of honour?” asks Smith.

Sites such as Anon ib that put the “revenge” in revenge porn aren’t the only sites designed to shame and violate women. UK writer Gina Martin found herself a victim of “upskirting” — a genre all of its own — where men approach women from behind and secretly take photos. After running with the incriminating phone to police at a music festival, she was told that these actions weren’t illegal.

Martin is petitioning to have her case reopened and for laws that do nothing for victims and nothing to their violators to be revised.

“We still live in a world where these types of men feel like they can have a woman’s body if they want it.

“If our justice system says a man taking pictures of a woman’s genitalia without her consent isn’t illegal, then how can we expect change?”