Pao­lo Ker­na­han

The re­cent court vic­to­ry of There­sa Ho, a per­ceived vic­tim of re­venge porn, once again spot­lights the dan­gers of let­ting your guard, and every­thing else, down for sor­did can­dids.

The judge in the land­mark mat­ter bun­dled her off with a $150,000 award, pa­per-clipped to the gen­er­al warn­ing of "don't take sex pic­tures." This fin­ger-wag­ging ad­vi­so­ry may seem na�ve and be­side the point, but it's an easy so­lu­tion for a big headache.On­line gawk­ers hand­ed down their judg­ment on Ms Ho, WI crick­eter Lendl Sim­mons and their un­for­tu­nate mis­takes.

The dis­so­lu­tion of the pair's re­la­tion­ship would have passed un­no­ticed, were it not for the dig­i­tal record of their trysts. All re­la­tion­ships, even those born in sweet­ness and light, can end dis­as­trous­ly.One par­ty may sub­mit to be­ing pho­tographed in the post-coitus lan­guor of a "guest­house" af­ter­noon, think­ing of it on­ly as an erot­ic me­men­to, per­haps to arouse pas­sions which in­vari­ably be­come list­less as ar­dour cools.

Mean­while, the per­son be­hind the cam­era may be think­ing, "Lemme snap she/he eh. Eef she/he on­ly play de a--, dey will see how fass dis en­nup in de in­taanet!"Am­a­teur pho­tog­ra­phy has be­come as much a part of to­day's fore­play as is the ner­vous fum­bling with the am­bi­tious­ly over­sized pro­phy­lac­tic.

Sex should be treat­ed like a kitchen grease fire; it must be at­tacked quick­ly and with fe­roc­i­ty if any­one is to be spared. They don't call it "fire in your loins" for noth­ing. Tech­nol­o­gy though, has changed every­thing, in­clud­ing our sex lives. In my day, we wrote love notes, scent­ed with Brut or Old Spice.

Some might mo­ti­vate a re­sponse, some­thing short and sour like, "I don't like you...or your hard shoes."Oh that she should re­spond at all! The bel­fry clangs with peals of hope!To­day's love let­ter is a naked pic in front of a mir­ror which re­flects a love for self far greater than the love of the per­son for whom the pic­ture is in­tend­ed.

What peo­ple do in the pri­va­cy of their own rent­ed rooms paid for with cash is their own busi­ness, ex­cept of course when it is made pub­lic.Women in par­tic­u­lar, are shamed for be­ing sex­u­al crea­tures by the "holi­er than thou" stone-throw­ing rab­ble. It is rub­bish and un­fair but, more im­por­tant­ly, it is what it is.

What­ev­er the law may or may not pre­scribe in such cas­es, it is prob­a­bly bet­ter to avoid what is an ab­solute­ly un­nec­es­sary risk.There is a ten­den­cy to in­ter­pret this ad­vice as con­dem­na­tion of those who have suf­fered in­va­sions of their pri­va­cy."The im­ages stolen from my phone/com­put­er are my pri­vate prop­er­ty. I am the vic­tim here!"

Very true, but it doesn't make the re­al­i­ties of to­day's on­line world any less...re­al.The chal­lenge of on­line pri­va­cy (as good an oxy­moron as you can get) ex­tends far be­yond reper­cus­sions of stolen or mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed sex pic­tures.

The irony is, we are more fierce­ly pro­tec­tive of our pri­va­cy in a tech age which in­spires peo­ple to be more open about their per­son­al lives. Through the "self­ie" and sta­tus up­date, hu­mans crave at­ten­tion, but on their own terms. It still hasn't dawned on most of us that Face­book, Twit­ter and In­sta­gram are pub­lic fo­ra. "Pri­va­cy set­tings" closed groups, per­son­al pro­files...these are all ar­ti­fice, il­lu­sions of con­trol.

The In­ter­net is the an­tithe­sis of pri­va­cy. When you go on­line, you sur­ren­der to an army of al­go­rithms, break­ing you apart and repack­ag­ing your iden­ti­ty for use at a lat­er date.Sim­i­lar­ly, oth­er In­ter­net users will ap­pro­pri­ate your posts for their own pur­pos­es.Just this week, an Aus­tralian woman post­ed a self­ie on Face­book hold­ing a win­ning horse race tick­et. A Face­book "friend" copied down the bar­code num­ber and with­drew her win­nings from a bank ma­chine. LOL!

Peo­ple are of­ten mor­ti­fied that a news­pa­per can lift en­tire con­ver­sa­tions from Face­book and pub­lish them.In the run-up to the 2015 elec­tions, some folks in pub­lic life found their in­tem­per­ate, even racist re­marks repli­cat­ed in the dailies. So­cial me­dia users are yet to ap­pre­ci­ate that what they do on­line can haunt them in the re­al world.

In the US it has be­come com­mon­place, al­beit con­tro­ver­sial, for em­ploy­ers to pe­ruse Face­book pro­files of job ap­pli­cants.The same, straight-laced young man or woman at the in­ter­view presents a dif­fer­ent face in pho­tos where they are drunk and falling out of cars, bars and clothes.

Cell phones and com­put­ers are now, lit­tle more than por­tals to the very pub­lic cy­ber­space. Com­bine the sala­cious con­tent they may con­tain with the malev­o­lent forces which ex­ist on the net and well...these things usu­al­ly end in tears.Of course our laws should keep pace with tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ments, com­pre­hen­sive­ly pun­ish­ing those guilty of re­venge porn and oth­er pri­va­cy breach­es.

When it comes to per­son­al rep­u­ta­tion, which is more im­por­tant than wealth (for some of us any­way), is it wis­er to re­ly on the law to mod­er­ate hu­man be­hav­iour, or sim­ply pro­tect our­selves through sound judg­ment?

For all the mishaps that can arise, it is per­haps bet­ter to com­mit your amorous evenings (or lunch­breaks) to the orig­i­nal hard dri­ve–your mind.