The women are the victims here

Staying safe online: Young women are vulnerable and they should be protected from exploitation. — EPA

THEY asked for it – many have laid the blame on the young women who had their naked photos and videos, used as collateral for loans issued via some online lending platforms, leaked online.

As reported, a 10-gigabyte file posted on the Internet exposed the personal details of more than 160 young women who were asked to provide the explicit material to secure money through online lending platform Jiedaibao.

Launched by JD Capital in 2015, Jiedaibao allows lenders to operate anonymously but requires borrowers to reveal their real names when making transactions.

Loan amounts and interest rates can be customised to meet the needs of users – often people who have a hard time accessing loans through more traditional financial institutions, like banks.

Lenders had reportedly told female borrowers that if they failed to repay the loans, their nude photos would be sent to their families and friends, whose information was also required for some transactions. The leaked file showed some borrowers even promised to repay loans with sexual favours.

Of course, Jiedaibao had denied any involvement in the loans – in a statement on its official Twitter-like Weibo account, Jiedaibao said that the “nude loan” deals were mainly conducted offline, and it had only “played the role of a money transfer platform in the deals”.

It is not surprising that some are reproaching the victims, accusing them of consuming luxuries that exceed their payment abilities.

Among the accusations directed at the women, two are the most common: First, the women are very young so they should not splurge on luxuries. Second, if they want to buy some luxury goods they should earn the money to do so by working rather than taking out loans.

But neither of them stands up to scrutiny. According to reports, some of the girls used their naked photos as pledges for a 5,000-yuan (RM3,203) loan to buy such things as a smartphone, which is hardly a luxury item. Second, a lot of the women are college students and although they do have part-time jobs, their wages are rather low.

Most of the victims lack social experience and they never realised how much danger they were putting themselves in by using intimate photos to get a loan.

Young women are vulnerable and they should be protected from exploitation.

Of course, the girls put themselves at risk by using nude photos to secure a loan, but it is the creditor and those who leaked the photos and videos that have done the wrong.

About a decade ago, criminal gangs forced or enticed young female migrant workers into the sex trade. Today’s online lending platforms are acting in a similar way. It is such creditors and platform operators who are the ones that should be held responsible, not the young women who are the victims.

China has nearly 2,600 platforms described as P2P (peer-to-peer) businesses, according to one industry estimate, with transactions valued at around 150bil yuan (RM96.2bil) last year.

And the recent case is not the first time online P2P businesses have been connected to potentially embarrassing photos.

Last month, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s payment platform Alipay was criticised after a set of photos showing female users in seductive poses was leaked on social media.

The photos were originally posted on Alipay’s newly launched social media feature called Circles, which allows only women to post photos, and had obscene comments from male users.

These scandals have exposed the regulatory problems in the online market and the lack of supervision.

It is time the authorities intervened by curbing such practices.