In somewhat shocking but unsurprising news from the UK, a recent study suggest that as many as 88% of all “self-made” sexually explicit photos posted online by teenagers end up being stolen and posted on pornographic websites for the rest of the world to see.

The study, which was carried out by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), said that the most common tactic for XXX-rated website owners was to scour through profiles of teenagers on social media sites like Facebook and Tagged, searching for suitably revealing images that they could ‘lift’.

Researchers investigating the phenomenon analyzed exactly 12,224 ‘sexy’ images and videos posted onto non-pornographic websites over a 47-hour window, logging them and tracking them to see if they reappeared anywhere else. Later, they found that 10,776 of those files had been reposted on pornographic websites – many of which specialize in hosting and sharing images of this ‘genre’.

Susie Hargreaves, of the IWF, urged young people to consider the dangers of posting their explicit images online, warning them that once those images have gone digital, they lose all control over where they may end up:

“This research gives an unsettling indication of the number of images and videos on the internet featuring young people performing sexually explicit acts or posing. It also highlights the problem of control of these images – once an image has been copied on to a parasite website, it will no longer suffice to simply remove the image from the online account.”

“We need young people to realize that once an image or a video has gone online, they may never be able to remove it entirely.”

The dangers of having compromising images posted onto pornographic websites go beyond mere embarrassment, notes TechCrunch.

In some cases, sexy images are appended together with the name of the individual concerned, meaning that they could show up in a search for that specific name on Google Images and other search engines:

“One explicit image I took when I was young but I cannot be specific to if I was 15 or 16 because it was long ago, and I never posted it to the internet,” explains one ‘victim’.

“Now, it is coming up on the first page of Google, which could jeopardize any future career I have or if any family/friends come across it.”