So they got into my phone

Wednesday 25 November is the international day for the elimination of violence against women, a multi-faceted phenomenon, very current. She was a victim of violence Guendalina Tavassi, famous influencer and face of the Big Brother. Some of his private videos were stolen and disseminated online. They have gone viral, passed from hand to hand. They have multiplied in private chats, on Telegram, Whatsapp, someone has even been uploaded to the major porn video sites. They are videos whose unauthorized diffusion violates the privacy of Guendalina. A real violence that the penal code severely punishes. From 9 August 2019, revenge porn is a crime also in Italy, punished with imprisonment of up to six years. Fanpage.it she reached Guendalina Tavassi to tell the painful story of which she was the victim.

The story of Guendalina Tavassi

“Now I have a little metabolized but it’s hard to go on. I am bombarded with messages, especially beautiful, I did not expect so much solidarity. Then there are the idiots who write bad things to me, those who make photomontages or say that I was with six men, six women. An avalanche of nonsense”, Gwendolyn says on the phone. It is proven, it has suffered what thousands of other women in the world experience every day, the gratuitous violence to which they are exposed and which often runs on the telematic channels of private chats.

How did they get your videos?

I don’t know how it went. A technician I got in contact with even saw that my ICloud was connected to a computer that had accessed my phone. My husband and I use the same ICloud to which my pc, my phone and his are connected. But among the accesses there was also that of this server. Then we recovered a series of emails asking me to log into my account because my passwords were stolen and I logged in several times. Anything could have happened. This happened to me in the past with my Instagram account. They sent me an email asking me to access my account, I thought they wanted to give me the blue check, I clicked and they stole it. It happens this way. They may have hacked my phone as well as my husband’s. Those videos were in a hidden photo folder. I don’t know how it could have happened but I do know that they spread so quickly that it is impossible to stop them. I’ve come to think that I hope all these videos have it, so that this situation ends.

How did you realize they had ended up on the net?

I was at a playground with my children when a friend from Naples called me to warn me. I thought it was a joke or a photomontage as it had already happened when I was at Big Brother. When she told me the videos were mine and they were shot in my bathroom I was shocked. At the same time my husband called me. He was screaming, he was shocked, his sister had warned him. I open Instagram and I realize that I was bombarded with messages from my followers who were warning me.

Your sons?

Gaia, poor thing, said to me ‘Mom, love, I don’t care. They are your personal things. Get up, you’re a lioness. ‘ I told the little ones that they had stolen some money on PostePay and they replied ‘But are we poor now, mom?’.

How are you?

When the news broke I was sick for two or three days, now I’m recovering. I’m strong, it happened, I can’t help it. I am a victim of this and I cannot ruin my life. My biggest problem right now is my daughter Gaia, my grandmother and my husband. I didn’t want my grandmother to know, Gaia is a teenager and I don’t want her to be bullied. And then there’s Umberto, who is certainly not happy to know that his wife’s videos are in the hands of all of Italy.

Did he take it badly?

(He cries, ed) He is very bad. I’m trying to build strength for him too. He is very jealous and already did not conceive of certain photos taken for work, perhaps in costume, let alone something like that.

What do you have left of this story?

The urge to tell all girls never to make videos, not even to keep them for themselves. This data is never fully protected, anything can happen. And to those who have been there and maybe now are ashamed, I want to say that they have to keep going out with their heads held high. They are not the ones who have done something wrong. Evil is done by those who march on this violence, those who kill women in this way.

Guendalina Tavassi’s lawyer: “Videos sold in exchange for money”

Fanpage.it also reached Leonardo D’Erasmo, lawyer of Guendalina Tavassi, to reconstruct the story also from a legal point of view.

How did you know that those videos ended up on the net?

Guendalina found out on Saturday that these videos were in circulation. She hadn’t noticed anything. She and her husband have ICloud in common. She received a call from a friend who warned her that these videos were being shot, the same call was received by her husband from her sister. She panicked, filed a complaint and called me. Initially the video was one, then they became more.

Hadn’t she noticed that they had entered her ICloud?

She didn’t notice anything. She had received phishing emails asking her to enter her data to increase the available storage space, these emails are faithfully reproduced. He had received it a couple of months ago. It is one of the hypotheses that we are evaluating. Now we are taking steps to understand more securely who put them on the network. The problem is, these videos have gone viral. They run everywhere, there are even people who had the Poste Pay recharged to send the video, we have the screenshots. People who promised videos in exchange for followers. The serious fact is that some Telegram groups also have photos of Guendalina’s daughters, very normal photos that are circulating.

Have you asked for Telegram channels to be blocked?

We have already taken steps to ask for the blackout but the problem is that they have become so viral that it is enough to have saved them to put them back into circulation.

How’s Gwendolyn doing?

It is proven. Guendalina is a strong woman, one who tries to fight back, but she is really tried. She is a mother of three and is afraid of walking around and being pointed at. It is terrible violence for a woman.

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