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For the female celebrities whose intimate photographs were stolen and posted online this week, the ramifications were humiliatingly obvious.
But now, members of the online community who have been downloading and sharing the images are coming to the realisation that they may be breaking child pornography laws, after it was claimed that at least one of the women was under age when her photograph was taken.
As Reddit users panicked and contemplated the prospect of "going to jail" for possessing child pornography, as one person commented, they began sharing step-by-step instructions on how to "scrub [their] hard drives clean" to remove any trace of their potentially criminal activity.
Hiding evidence of a crime, in itself, could constitute a crime.
According to administrators on Reddit, the bulletin board-style website where registered users have been sharing the images, photographs of US gymnast McKayla Maroney, 18, and MTV actress Liz Lee could constitute child pornography because the women were believed to have been under age at the time they were taken.
"If we don't remove them [images of Maroney and Lee], this subreddit will most likely be banned, very quickly," a Reddit moderator has warned users.
The images of Lee, who stars in the MTV mockumentary-style comedy series My Life as Liz, were not part of the original 100-plus images of celebrities, including Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence, that were stolen and dumped online in the past week.
The photos of Lee were allegedly taken by a former boyfriend who is accused of leaking them online in 2007, although those photographs have been shared again in the latest scandal.
Maroney, an Olympic gold medallist and world champion gymnast, tweeted that the photos of her posted online this week were "fake". But her lawyer has reportedly sent a letter to several pornography sites that have reposted the images, demanding that they remove them because Maroney was underage in several of them.
The images so far released online are believed to represent only a fraction of a vast archive of explicit photographs that a group of hackers has been amassing for months, possibly by compromising the stars' iCloud accounts.
The hacked photographs were originally thought to have been posted on a "deep web" forum a week ago, but it was only when the images were subsequently uploaded to the 4chan anonymous image-sharing forum on Sunday that they were circulated widely.
According to online news organisation The Daily Dot, the Reddit community r/TheFappening has become the main hub for sharing the stolen photographs, because Reddit is one of the few mainstream websites that is not deleting links to the photos.
However, following revelations that some of the images may constitute child pornography, a moderator has warned that any images featuring Maroney or Lee "will be immediately removed".
"Due to this, we will be removing any and all things that contain their images. It is considered CP [child pornography], and breaks reddit's site-wide rules along with US Law, and will get this subreddit banned if we were to allow them to be posted (not to mention the fact again, that it is child pornography)," the moderator wrote.
Some on Reddit appeared to panic. "Oh f---, are we going to jail?" wrote one person.
A number of people responded with advice on how to clear evidence from their computers.
Meantime, the FBI is investigating reports that the theft of the photographs was the work of an underground hacking and picture-trading ring rather than a lone individual.
An anonymous poster on the 4chan website referred to an "underground celeb n00d-trading ring" (using web slang for "nude") that "has existed for years".
The Deadspin sports website disclosed that one of its readers alerted it to the existence of a large cache of stolen celebrity photographs "a few weeks ago".
The Gawker website also established that anonymous users were last week discussing a collection of "explicit vids and pics" on a thread dedicated to Lawrence on AnonIB, a 4chan offshoot.
Twitter suspended the account of a user who, hours before the first Lawrence photographs emerged, spoke of "nudes of like 20 celebs" for which a celebrity website was allegedly offering cash.
An anonymous poster, who claimed to be involved in the thefts, wrote on AnonIB that the hacking had been "several months" in the making.
One of the victims, actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead, said the stolen photographs of her were old and had previously been deleted.
Gawker reported that one 4chan user described a years-old "ring" of celebrity photograph traders, a group that could only be joined by providing your own nude images - effectively "buying your way in", the website said.
Initial reports suggested that hackers might have taken advantage of a "vulnerability" in the security system for Apple's iCloud wireless data storage service.
Fairfax Media, with The Telegraph, London
