Tech Shout!

Women who happen to be victims to harassment will have the opportunity to take revenge with a new website that allows them to post pictures of men who taunt or grope them. Pictures can be posted from phones or digital cameras to the website of Holla Back, a US-based blogging site founded by women. Lawyers have warned, however, that women using the website could lay themselves open to being sued for libel if they do not have strong evidence of harassment.

The site was created by seven American women following the quick thinking of Thao Nguyen, 23, a New York commuter who used her phone to photograph a man masturbating on a train last August. The picture was published on the front of the New York Daily News. Daniel Hoyt, a 43-year-old restaurateur, was identified, arrested and convicted of public lewdness as a result of the publication. In April he was sentenced to two years’ probation. Its American founders say they are committed to exposing pests who leer at, make jibes at, proposition or grope women in public, or expose themselves.

Sabine Rödiger, Holla Back’s European spokeswoman, said: “Street harassment is so common that most of us, women and men, are used to it. But we are trying to set up a place where women can ‘holla back’ and talk about it, because this behaviour is not just unwelcome, it is unacceptable. Street harassment threatens your self-esteem and confidence and can affect your health and happiness.

One posting in America shows a man from the shoulders down, holding his crotch.The woman who describes it says she saw the man while on a trip to London. “He’s pretty drunk, but I can just hear him shout stuff like ‘Eat it’ . . . That was it, time to Holla Back at this jerk! I put my cameraphone on max zoom from across the street and walked by pretending not to look. What a loser and it ruined my trip.”

Holla Back has already started operations in New York and is now opening for business in Europe, with sites in Britain, Austria, Switzerland and Germany. The site claims to have had 125 postings since it went live last September and averages 1,500 hits a day, with a maximum 75,000 on one day. Rödiger said the British site’s operators would read all submissions before publication. She added that the American site had never received a complaint from the subject of a posting.