On Sunday morning, Ana Medina woke up to over a hundred texts from friends and family asking about her Only Fans. Medina’s heart sank as she scrolled through the multiple missed calls from her mother to the dm’s from old high school acquaintances wondering why she got into selling nudes. The problem is, Medina doesn’t have an Only Fans. A fake Instagram account was made impersonating Medina, nearly duplicating her own by using the same profile picture and  simply adding an extra “e” to her handle. She is not the first, nor the last, woman to encounter a fake porn account made of herself. 

Medina is a sophomore at DePaul and while she has seen this happen to women around her, she never thought she would experience it as well.

“They had blocked me as well as my boyfriend and roommate so we couldn’t see the content,” Medina said. “When I finally saw it I was so confused — it was a lot of pictures taken from my own feed that I felt confident in and turned around to be used to exploit me.”

The fake account followed a lot of Medina’s male followers and posted explicit videos of other women in the account’s story, portraying themselves to be Medina. The profile also included a link to a fake Only Fans account used to steal credit card information.

“I kept getting DMs that I literally, like, at one point, wrote out a text and had it copied in my phone and I would paste it and send it to people like thanks for letting me know I’m trying to get it down and report it,” Medina said. 

While Medina only had this happen to her once, a lot of women experience it multiple times throughout their life.

Kelly Dehon-Fix is a 21-year-old from Naples, Fla. who has been dealing with this for years. The first time this happened was in 2019 when she had just turned 18. An account was promoting an Only Fans link in the bio, claiming someone could pay to view provocative videos of her.

“I’ve had it happen four times,” Dehon-Fix said. “I was disgusted. I had many people dming me to let me know each time it happened.”

Typically, the owner of the fake account will block the impersonator, so their account doesn’t get reported. Dehon-Fix had the opposite happen.

“When I watched the story they had, it was screen recordings of my own stories, even from weeks previous,” Dehon said. “It really sucks, this is not the portrait I’m trying to paint of myself at all.”

Three of the accounts were taken down impersonating Dehon, but one still remains.

“What I think is lost for these young women is that it doesn’t matter when they’re [the account] shut down, something permanently is lost, like control over your own image and how you’re seen in the public,” said Erin MacKenna-Sandhir, a DePaul faculty member in the Word, Rhetoric, & Discourse department.

Mackenna-Sandhir teaches feminism at DePaul and, when it comes to how women are portrayed on social media, says she thinks its important to focus on the issue of how women’s bodies are used for money rather than telling them how to present themselves online. 

“I think when we frame it as an issue that’s related to gender and bodily autonomy and ownership over your own image, then it helps us think about it in more complex ways and maybe that can guide the kinds of responses and protections that we could eventually put in place,” Mackenna-Sanhir said.

Sheena Erete, an associate professor of Computing and Digital media college at DePaul, discussed with DePaulia just how simple it is for someone to create a fake pornagraphic account of someone. 

“There’s no verification for most social media so it’s very easy now. You always have the terms of service agreement that says that you are who you say you are, but the reality is there’s no check,” Erete said. “So it’s pretty easy to just make a fake account, period.” 

Fifty-six percent of females thirteen years and older in the United States use Instagram. Despite Instagram’s prominence in social media, there is minimal data as to how many people experience exploitation on the app. 

Instagram has recognized this is a problem and issued a statement on their website to combat the number of fake accounts created.

“If someone created an Instagram account pretending to be you, you can report it to us. Make sure to provide all the requested info, including a photo of your government-issued ID. We only respond to reports sent to us from the person who’s being impersonated or a representative of the person who’s being impersonated (example: a parent).” 

But not everyone is able to have the account taken down. Justine Drake, a senior at Drew University gave up fighting for it after months of trying to report it but still checks to make sure the account is still there. 

“I can’t look it up anymore on my phone but I occasionally have my boyfriend take a look about once a month and it’ll still be there,” Drake said. 

Drake had about 50 different people report the account and still Instagram has not taken it down. The profile looks identical to Drake’s, including a porn star matching Drake’s red hair.

“It appeared that a lot of effort went into making an account that could legitimately fool people into clicking the links,” Drake said. “It’s the little details that makes me think this was planned with the intent to harm and scam any of the people they requested to follow.”

For Drake, seeing her profile being falsely used is nothing new as she has seen it multiple times, dating back to high school. 

“Nearly every single one of my friends have had something similar happen dating back to as early as 2015,” Drake said. “It’s kinda insane how there’s no regulation on stuff like this since the internet and thus social media is a “public commodity” and yet we have regulations on other commodities like water and phone lines.”

Drake’s experience is not uncommon for most girls growing up in the age of social media.

MacKenna-Sandhir talks about the importance of social media in youth and how easy it is to be affected by how you are perceived.

“The fact that women are sort of forced to trade in their own image even from a young age starting in middle school of cultivating an image through instagram —it’s almost like a requirement of your social life,” said MacKenna-Sandhir.

Erete wanted to emphasize the exploitation and lack of protection for young women on social media, in addition to its effects on their mental and physical health.

“I don’t put the blame on the women to fix the problem that they didn’t create, I put it on the system that doesn’t actually do much to protect them from it,” Erete said. “Put it on the people who exploit girls, put them on sex offenders list and have them prosecuted because they aren’t being held accountable for their actions.”

Medina has now changed her Instagram account to private in fear of another fake profile being made of her. 

“I know so many friends who have gone through this same thing that I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened again,” Medina said. “It’s disgusting and wrong but I’m not surprised.”