Angie Varona is one of the most recognized young sex symbols on the Internet, not because she is an aspiring model, or even asking for the attention, but because her private photo account was hacked four years ago.
The 18-year-old said her likeness has shown up on porn sites, humor sites and reddit.com's now defunct "jailbait" section -- where people traded and commented on photos of underage girls, even on advertisements. There are also numerous unauthorized Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts and YouTube channels, all claiming to be Varona -- one Facebook fan page has more than 41,000 likes.
A recent Google search of "Angie Varona" turned up 608,000 original search items, including 63,000 photos tagged with her name. Many of the photos out there now, Varona said, are not her originals, but are remakes or women pretending to be her.
"They Photoshopped one of my bikini pictures," she said. "I have the original and everything. They Photoshopped the top off."
For four years Angie kept hoping the online obsession would stop, but it's only gotten worse.
"People wish to exploit me and I guess stalk me in a way...they want every picture that has ever been taken of me," she said.
This summer, in an effort to spread awareness about the dangers of photo hacking, Varona decided to tell her story to the "Miami Montage," a publication put together by high school journalism students at a University of Miami, then decided to tell her story to "Nightline."
Varona was just 14 years old when she uploaded some provocative photos of herself wearing lingerie and bikinis -- no nude pictures, she said -- to the image-sharing website, Photobucket.com in 2007. It was decision that she said has ruined her life.
The 18-year-old said her likeness has shown up on porn sites, humor sites and reddit.com's now defunct "jailbait" section -- where people traded and commented on photos of underage girls, even on advertisements. There are also numerous unauthorized Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts and YouTube channels, all claiming to be Varona -- one Facebook fan page has more than 41,000 likes.
A recent Google search of "Angie Varona" turned up 608,000 original search items, including 63,000 photos tagged with her name. Many of the photos out there now, Varona said, are not her originals, but are remakes or women pretending to be her.
"They Photoshopped one of my bikini pictures," she said. "I have the original and everything. They Photoshopped the top off."
For four years Angie kept hoping the online obsession would stop, but it's only gotten worse.
"People wish to exploit me and I guess stalk me in a way...they want every picture that has ever been taken of me," she said.
This summer, in an effort to spread awareness about the dangers of photo hacking, Varona decided to tell her story to the "Miami Montage," a publication put together by high school journalism students at a University of Miami, then decided to tell her story to "Nightline."
Varona was just 14 years old when she uploaded some provocative photos of herself wearing lingerie and bikinis -- no nude pictures, she said -- to the image-sharing website, Photobucket.com in 2007. It was decision that she said has ruined her life.
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