Late in the evening of June 12, a VKontakte user with an empty profile and a little-known Russian rapper on an avatar sent Polina Anisimova a photo with her face and asked if it was her. She read the message only in the middle of the night. Pauline was definitely in the photo: her sweatshirt, birthmark, mole on her face. But when and how the picture was taken, she did not understand. In addition, she did not upload anything like that on the Internet. Alarmed, Polina showed a message to her young man.

First, they decided that this was some kind of unsuccessful joke or a new type of network blackmail, and began to google the methods of extortion “VKontakte”.

After Polina confirmed that she was really in the photo, the anonymous author sent her other photos with the words that he had “bad news” for her and she “suffered the same way as his loved ones.” In the pictures, some girl pisses against a white-brown tile. Anisimova was even more embarrassed, refusing to believe that it was she.

The anonymous author did not blackmail Polina or threaten her, but only warned that she, like many other girls, had become a victim of covert filming.

On the frames was a watermark with the words Hidden Zone (English "hidden zone"). Having driven the phrase into the search engine, Polina and her young man easily found hundreds of videos shot with hidden cameras in the toilets on one of the torrent trackers. In a preview to one of them, Anisimova recognized herself. There was no doubt: this is her bag, her blue jeans, her buttocks. True, in the screenshot she was with long hair, which she cut two years ago.

So Polina found out that at least since 2014 there has been a porno video with her participation on the Internet, shot without her knowledge.

The next day she herself told about everything in facebook  . “If I were silent, this story could be an occasion to blackmail me in the future, although I’m not to blame for anything here, like thousands of other victims,” she explains.

The story was picked up by the media. Most shocked by the fact that Polina, according to her assumption, was removed in the toilet of one of the cafes of the popular Chocolate Chain network. At least, this is what her “informant” thinks, who talked with other girls who got on similar videos. Some of them figured out when and how they could get on these shots.

According to the anonymous author, he began his investigation after his relative became the “heroine” of one of these videos. Now he is trying to calculate who shoots the videos and notifies the victims using Findface technology (allows you to find the VKontakte person’s account from the photo).

So far, he has managed to contact less than ten victims - on many videos the faces are either not visible at all, or it is impossible to recognize them. He hopes that the statements of these victims to law enforcement will be enough to initiate an investigation.

Now Polina Anisimova and four other girls who have become victims of covert filming are negotiating with a lawyer who will represent their interests. “What happened is a violation of our rights. And now we are trying to understand what to do with this, how to restore our rights, ”she says.

Anonymous also persuades her relative to go to court, but she, a low-ranking official in the administration of her city, says he is afraid of losing her job: “Their unspoken policy - if you were involved in any scandal, even if you were the victim, you help “quit.”

The young man does not name his name, explaining that “he does not want to shine, given the connections that those under [he] dig” have.

***

A quick search on the net is enough to make sure: covert shooting in public toilets of cafes and shopping centers, in locker rooms of gyms and on beaches has been going on for a long time, and similar videos are widespread. The consumers of this content are voyeurs - those who are sexually aroused by peeping at other people. A separate type of voyeurism is peeping at women in the toilets; such people are excited by everything related to urination.

One of the companions of the anonymous author who helps Polina and other girls figure out the perpetrators is a hacker who penetrated a closed forum and said that most voyeurs - men from 35 to 60 years old. They exist according to the laws of a secret society - on sites where they communicate and share videos, there are varying degrees of access to content, and registering there can be quite difficult. One can see the desire for careful conspiracy. They have their own legends and their heroes - suppliers of better content and better angles.

Until the last scandal with the Chocolate Girl, voyeurs were a rather inconspicuous community - in Russia, hundreds of women annually become victims of those who install hidden cameras and sell recordings from them, but there have been no high-profile criminal cases and sentences.

The press service of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow could not recall a single statement from the “heroines” of such videos over the past few months. The police do not consider this a mass phenomenon, noting only isolated cases.

Videos such as the one Anisimova discovered are sold on closed sites for voyeurs with a complex access system and on regular porno resources. Registration on specialized sites can cost hundreds of dollars.

Voyeur forums, depending on the complexity of registration, can be divided into closed and open. There, participants exchange experience shooting and peeping, share their own videos and finds from the Internet, give advice on choosing equipment.

Judging by what is written on the forums, many authors of the video use miniature cameras disguised as other objects - the most common ones look like key rings - car keys. In Russia, the purchase, manufacture and sale of special technical equipment for obtaining tacit information (that is, without warning those people whom you record using CCTV) is prohibited. For violation of the relevant article of the Criminal Code (138.1), the maximum penalty is up to four years in prison. The most high-profile case in recent years has beenexcitedagainst a member of PARNAS Natalia Pelevina - she found a pen with a video camera.

Camera keychain

Voyeurs themselves, in the majority, believe that they are not doing anything wrong - although they fear for their safety, discussing what they might face.

The former deputy director of the defense plant, for example, was not even afraid of the revelation - he was opened after he had spied on his colleagues for 15 years, but he “couldn’t stop it” and continued to “look around, watch”.

In another thread, he enthusiastically describes the state that covers him when he peeps: “When I go to the toilet and peep, sometimes even with my heart it does poorly, such a buzz, the emotions are so strong and bright! Toilet species ... take possession of my whole nature. "

A voyeur doesn’t need to see something intimate for excitement, the fact of invading someone else’s space and feeling of power over an unsuspecting person may be enough, says Veronika Kashirina, a clinical psychologist and addiction specialist. To one degree or another, many people like to peep at others, but, according to Kashirina, it is precisely the obsessive need for this that threatens the safety of other people (the Voyeurism is listed in the column “Sexual Preference Disorders”) as a deviation.

This is due to the violation of the psychological boundaries between people: “Often people in our country live in one-room apartments of five people each - dress up in front of each other, wash without closing the door, parents have sex, and children sleep next to it - this greatly erodes the psychological boundaries, the attitude to one’s own and someone else’s intimacy is distorted, which may underlie both the desire to peek and, on the contrary, not protect oneself, strive to expose oneself in public, ”the psychologist argues.

Such people often have problems with self-esteem, superiority over the victim and support of each other in closed communities help to artificially raise it - and at the same time suppress guilt, a sense of one's own “wrongness” and fear of exposure.

Most of them are not afraid of criminal prosecution. Its prospects are foggy, the discussion participant encourages the interlocutors: victims are hard to find, and the content from the point of view of the law is ordinary pornography. In general, you just need to be careful and not “draw attention to our existence, otherwise the journalists can inflate,” he writes.

***

A hacker who hacked into a voyeur forum and studied closed sections under stolen accounts said that the first such communities (one of which was called Petrovka 38) appeared back in the nineties, in the era of VHS cameras. The largest of the existing ones now - voyeurs among themselves call it "House" (short for the original name - "House for Piglets") - created 12 years ago by a man known as Keks.

Screenshot of the page on the "House"

Membership in the "House" is closed, and the participants have different levels of access to the sections. The status and access level are increased for money or the publication of a video.

“Many veteran veteran retirees have long been out of business, they are provided with an influx of fresh videos by the forum at the expense of newcomers seeking to advance in the community hierarchy and gain a higher status, giving access to closed sections of the forum with more extreme content,” says the hacker.

Large open forums also have closed sections where participants post their “work”. Judging by the content of the forums, most of these people do not pursue commercial goals, but there are several “operators” who shoot commercials for sites specializing in such videos. They advertise their products in the commercial sections of the forums. Actively communicating in the community, they almost do not provide details about themselves, although other users sometimes share stories from life.

One of the companions of the anonymous talked with a former member of the "House", who was the sponsor of the site and for this in 2008 gained access to its closed sections. According to this person, there are several major manufacturers of paid videos for voyeurs.

“In nature (beaches of nudists, sex in the bushes, pissing girls in forest plantations) Vadukha is for sale, to a lesser extent - Jerki. Zooom specializes in pissing women at wedding venues (and especially brides). Ver removes pissing minors. Fall has been shooting for many years, sitting right in the cesspool in a gas mask and hiding in some kind of blanket or raincoat. Particularly dangerous voyeur Surokspit, who used to be a nonprofit author and moderator of Domika, has been operating in Moscow and taking off under skirts on escalators for at least nine years, ”the source said.

People with such nicknames are often mentioned on forums, and on torrent trackers are thousands of videos supposedly produced.

Named the source, Surokspit, in fact, uploads videos on paid sites where women are lifted up skirts on the Moscow metro escalators. The clips are shot on DVRs or cameras hidden in a bag or attached to an umbrella.

For a long time, “operator” specialized under the nickname Uchebnik specialized in covert filming in public toilets. Until about 2009, he owned a website with paid videos shot in the toilets of catering and educational institutions. Among voyeurs, Uchebnik is a legend. “I’m not a textbook, I’m just learning,” says, for example, in the status of one of the users of the voyeur forum. Forum participants mark his "corporate style", which can be guessed in anonymous videos that appeared after 2009 on major specialized sites.

Another way to create content for voyeurs is to infect the victim’s computer with a virus that allows you to remotely access your webcam.

Such viruses are often developed by voyeurs themselves to attack a narrow circle of victims, so the antivirus does not immediately recognize the threat. In addition, as one of the sources said, there is legal software for remote access, which is not blocked by antivirus software, it is installed by scammers. Videos of an intimate nature, obtained through a webcam, are sold on the "House" in the relevant commercial sections.

“Webcam surveillance has become a massive cyber fraud,” says Internet expert Anton Merkurov. “It’s enough to download a suspicious program that will bring the virus to your computer.” According to him, the best way to protect against this is to stick a webcam, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg does, for example.

***
  The video with Polina before being sold to a pornographic torrent tracker was sold to the paid Hidden Zone site, as evidenced by the corresponding watermark.

Hidden Zone - one of the largest resources specializing in content for voyeurs. According to approximate data from SimilarWeb (the site is closed statistics), from April to May 2016 it was visited by more than 90 thousand people.

Many fans of non-standard porn dream of getting to the Hidden Zone, but this is difficult because of the multi-stage registration and blocking of accounts with stolen passwords. Whole discussion threads on forums are devoted to describing how to get there. When you try to access the Hidden Zone from a Russian IP address, a stub appears that the site is blocked by Roskomnadzor, although it is not on the black list on the site of the supervisory authority.
  The site is updated daily, the latest videos allegedly shot in Russian public toilets were added on June 26.

So on one of the torrent trackers in the section "Unconventional porn", among thousands of other videos, a video appeared with Polina Anisimova. But he turned out to be just one of the episodes of the "series", which was shot in public toilets for several years (and, possibly, still shot).

On one of the pages of the torrent tracker there are five “seasons” of video shot in women's toilets from 2011 to 2015. In the column "country of production" Russia is indicated. In each season, an average of 150-200 videos with women of different ages catering for the need. The last folder - for 2015 - was added in January 2016. Each video is assigned a serial number, and judging by the number of the last video, there are more than two thousand of them in this “series” alone.

In the branches under the distributions, forum visitors comment on camera angles and complain about the irregular deliveries of new videos.

“Even through one such camera in a public place, hundreds of“ models ”pass on a day, and there are dozens of material per week,” one of the commentators laments (author's punctuation).

In the folder for 2011 there are videos shot from the cesspool of the street cabin, as well as in the toilet, decorated with light tiles. In the next "seasons" these places no longer appear. In the same folder there are videos with an interior that is identical to what can be seen in the frames of the video with Polina Anisimova and at least one other girl found by the anonymous author. According to the second girl, this is the Shokoladnitsa toilet near the Oktyabrskaya metro station.

This toilet appears in hundreds of videos from the rest of the “seasons”. One of the cameras, apparently, was installed in the urn next to the toilet: on some frames, the lens partially overlaps the black garbage bag. In another toilet, according to an anonymous assumption, the camera was disguised as a metal napkin holder on the door, from which the clothes hook was removed. “How you can make holes for screws in the door during office hours and replace one piece of furniture with another, I don’t understand,” he wrote.

Women's toilet, in the Shokoladnitsa coffee shop near the Oktyabrskaya metro station. Photo: Rain

After the publication of Pauline's post, users of one of the thematic forums created a separate discussion thread for "plum." A few comments mention a chain of coffee houses.

“One thing I can tell you with complete certainty: we will not soon wait for the fresh clips from the Chocolate Girl push,” one of the participants in the discussion writes. “They didn’t burn the other Chocolate Girl,” another answers him.

Another user discusses whether the coffee house itself may be related to covert filming: “... the lingering delusion that the employees or the administration of the institution are somehow involved in this will sooner or later be dispelled, but now besides the heifers themselves,„ under the rim of the toilet bowl, “the Security Council will begin to look, worried about reputation risks,” he writes (author’s punctuation).

Screenshot from one of the forums for voyeurs

In addition to Shokoladnitsa on Oktyabrskaya, victims of covert filming who were warned by the anonymous author were able to recognize the video from the coffeehouse on the network on Tverskaya, Lomonosovsky Prospekt and near Paveletskaya metro station. A geolocation search on Instagram gives you the opportunity to see that two years ago the interior of the Shokoladnitsa toilet on Tverskaya 19a was the same as on footage shot by voyeurs in 2012, 2013 and early 2014. Now there is a different interior. The cafe declined to comment.

Toilet in the "Chocolate" on Tverskaya 19a, 2016 / Rain

Hidden camera video preview

Instagram page screenshot

A woman.ru website user wrote about the allegedly hidden camera in the Shokoladnitsa toilet on Lomonosov Avenue in 2014. According to her, “the cafe staff behaved rudely, they didn’t even try to apologize” (author's spelling - Rain). In one of the two Shokoladnitsa located on Lomonosov Avenue, they said that they had not heard anything about such an incident, in the other that he was, but in another cafe (in which it was not possible to clarify).

The series was shot in at least seven different interiors, but they are all made in the same beige and brown tones. It was not possible to find out from the video where these toilets are located.

In the Chocolate Girl itself, they are extremely reluctant to comment on such cases. Immediately after the scandal with Anisimova, the network’s general director Tamara Shesterina, in an interview with the National News Service, promised that the coffee shop’s security service would check information about hidden cameras. According to her, video recording is carried out only in the corridors and the working area, and she does not have information about installing hidden cameras in toilets.

The employee of the security service "Chocolate" in

When visiting a sauna or a bath, many visitors are afraid that hidden video cameras will be installed in the rooms, which can record an intimate video and then upload it to the Internet or blackmail a client. In this topic, we will consider the issue of hidden cameras installed in saunas and their use. We recommend that you read

WHY INSTALL HIDDEN CAMERAS IN SAUNAS?

SAFETY: In almost every bathhouse or sauna, there are both open and hidden video cameras that carry out the security function, and they are located in the zone of lack of intimate visibility, i.e. entrances, exits, walkways and reception. About the settings of such cameras is a plate with the inscription: "Video surveillance is in progress", located in a place visible to visitors.

COMPROMAT: In some saunas, hidden video cameras can be installed located directly in the premises of the intimate zone, i.e. cloakroom, swimming pool, lounges, steam room, etc. Hidden cameras are installed, as you might have guessed, to get dirt on a certain circle of people visiting the bathhouse. Such hidden video cameras are used, as a rule, in certain cases and for certain visitors, they will not shoot everyone in a row.

FAVORITES OR HOBBIES:Yes, yes and yes again, there are owners who install hidden cameras in the bathhouse because of amateur interests to observe visitors. Such bath owners record and collect a collection of the best records of their visitors, as a rule, the records do not go beyond the owner’s eyes and are not sold, but sometimes information leakage can occur and the record goes to the Internet. Bathhouse owners do not sell such records and do not show them to anyone, so as not to lose the reputation of their bathhouse and not to lose income. Moreover, installing hidden cameras in a bathhouse without warning visitors is a criminal offense, and not everyone wants to get involved. We recommend that you read

EARNINGS: Hidden video cameras in the bath are also installed to earn money by selling the captured video. As a rule, owners of saunas don’t sin by this, but random visitors to baths install hidden cameras for such purposes. After receiving the video of interest to them, hidden video cameras are removed, and the received video is sold. It is quite difficult to find such intruders, but you can find their cameras, since it is very difficult to install a hidden video camera without a mini repair, which reduces their stealth, moreover, such video cameras are wireless i.e. transmitting video through a radio signal, which allows them to be detected using special devices. By the way, to combat such violators, owners can put hidden cameras in the intimate area of \u200b\u200bthe bathhouse, identifying and suppressing the activity of violators, so as not to lose the reputation of the bathhouse and not to get rid of problems.

HOW TO DETECT A HIDDEN CAMERA IN A BAN?

VISUAL INSPECTION:  To find hidden cameras in the bathhouse, carefully examine all the places where they can be installed. Such places include places with the best view of the room. Hidden camcorders can be installed in fire sensors, alarms, TV buttons, light bulbs, electrical appliances, etc. There are a lot of places for installing hidden cameras, it is very difficult to visually find a professionally disguised hidden camera.We recommend that you read

SEARCH USING THE APPLIANCE:If a hidden remote-control video camera is installed in the bathhouse that transmits video by radio signal, then you can detect such a camera using special devices for detecting hidden cameras. How to use a device to detect a hidden video camera, you will read in the instructions that came with such a device, since the settings of each device are individual. DEEP INSPECTION:  It is almost impossible to detect wired, well-hidden hidden video cameras without a total inspection, which includes analysis of some decorative parts of the sauna. Nobody will allow to do this, since such actions can be performed only by special bodies by a court decision.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR INSTALLING A HIDDEN CAMERA IN A BATH

For the installation of a hidden video camera in a bath or sauna, and in other places, criminal liability. Even if these cameras are not turned on and do not shoot anyone, this is already a punishable act, but if these cameras shot a video, and even worse distributed this video, then there comes an additional responsibility of the person who installed and used hidden cameras.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE BEEN TAKEN ON THE HIDDEN VIDEO CAMERA IN THE BATH?

We will not give you a definite answer, since in each case the action is individual, but if you have nothing to hide, you must contact the police.

The spy kit will be incomplete without a toothbrush, Coca-Cola jar or other household stuff, equipped with a micro lens and not causing suspicion. This review presents a dozen small hidden cameras with great features.

The hidden camera is the number one device. Manufacturers consider the best camouflage for “peeping” gadgets to be a design for every little thing - from a pack of cigarettes to a can of air freshener.

The electric toothbrush Oral-B Pinhole Spy  It helps to monitor not only the teeth. A cunningly hidden camera shoots video in AVI format, 640 * 480. Built-in flash memory allows you to store on Oral-B Pinhole Spy  up to 8 GB of compromising evidence. The average cost of a “dental” gadget is $ 243.

Hidden in a bundle Marlboro  camera SDHCC pinhole  provides high quality video material. The footage can be recorded on a video or DVD player, as well as viewed remotely from any TV and computer.

Law enforcement officials were the first to “hide” the spy device. Now similar gadgets are available for civilians for as low as $ 300. Spy shoes  consists of two parts - the camera itself, a shoe or sneaker mounted in the nose, and a 1 GB cell phone. To get a clear signal, the distance between them should not exceed 50 meters.

Hidden camera from Omejo  disguised as a lighter. According to the manufacturer, it can take up to 2 hours of video with excellent sound and a resolution of 640 * 480.

Hidden camera- "lighter" from the company Omejo

Gadget Motion Detector Telephone positioned by the creators as a complete alarm. The phone "with a secret" not only conducts video surveillance, but also responds to movements within a radius of 25 meters. Having recorded unauthorized activity, Motion Detector Telephone  sends a signal to the owner - calls to a pre-programmed number.

Company Brickhouse  produces “spyware” devices operating in extreme conditions. Sudden movements and lack of lighting - not a hindrance for a hidden camera-packing napkins Tissue box. Frame rate - up to 30 per second, resolution - 720 * 480.

Belt Minox  - A real dream for fans of "Bond." Complete with a hidden camera built into it are an SD memory card and a USB adapter. The approximate cost of the image “toy” is $ 300.