Stolen Faces, Shattered Trust: Wollongong Residents Speak Out on Image Theft Crisis

The photos were ordinary enough, a birthday party at Stuart Park, a graduation shot outside the University of Wollongong's McKinnon Building, a family snap from the Nan Tien Temple open day last September. What the people in them did not know was that those images had been scraped, duplicated and reposted across multiple platforms by accounts they had never heard of and could not find.

Duplicate image misuse, the practice of lifting personal photographs from social media or community pages and recycling them for fake profiles, scam advertisements or coordinated harassment, has become a pressing concern across the Illawarra. Wollongong-based community groups say they have fielded a rising number of complaints this year from residents who discovered their likenesses attached to accounts or listings they did not create.

The timing matters. Across New South Wales, heat has been building, literally and politically, through a winter that has already rewritten climate records for Sydney. Community attention is stretched thin. Yet digital safety advocates say that is precisely when image theft accelerates: people are distracted, posting more to stay connected, and less likely to audit their own social footprints.

Local Groups Picking Up the Slack

At the Wollongong Neighbourhood Centre on Keira Street, staff have been running informal digital literacy sessions since March. The centre does not publicly disclose attendance figures, but coordinator-level staff told community partners that demand for the sessions roughly doubled between April and June. The centre is not alone. The Illawarra Legal Centre, which operates out of Crown Street in the CBD, fields inquiries about online harm and image misuse through its community legal education program, a service it has offered since at least 2019.

The University of Wollongong's SMART Infrastructure Facility and its broader tech-policy research community have no formal program targeting image duplication specifically, but academics connected to the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts have been vocal in wider public debates about the adequacy of Australia's Online Safety Act, which was last substantially reviewed in 2024. Under that Act, the eSafety Commissioner holds powers to order removal of certain non-consensual image content, though the process requires complainants to have already exhausted platform-level avenues first, a step many residents find opaque and slow.

One Port Kembla resident, who asked not to be identified because she fears further targeting, described discovering a duplicate account using her profile photo on a property-listing platform in May. She said she spent three weeks trying to get the listing removed before the platform acted. By then, the account had been used to solicit deposit payments from at least two prospective renters. Wollongong's rental market, already stressed by low vacancy rates, sitting below two percent across the Illawarra for much of 2025, according to Real Estate Institute of NSW data, makes fake listings a particularly effective lure.

What Residents Can Do Right Now

Digital safety organisations recommend a set of practical steps that do not require any technical expertise. Reverse image searches through tools such as Google Images or TinEye can identify where a photograph has been reposted. On Facebook, the platform's privacy checkup tool, accessible through the account settings menu, allows users to restrict who can download or share their images. Instagram offers a similar control under Advanced Settings on individual posts.

The eSafety Commissioner's website maintains a step-by-step reporting guide for image-based abuse, including duplicate profile misuse. Complaints can be lodged at esafety.gov.au, and the Commissioner's office has previously stated it aims to respond to priority reports within 48 hours, though that benchmark applies to the most severe categories of harm.

For Wollongong residents who want in-person support, the Illawarra Legal Centre runs a free drop-in clinic on Tuesday mornings and can refer complex cases to specialist cybersafety lawyers. The Wollongong Neighbourhood Centre's next digital safety session is scheduled for late July; the centre asks that people call ahead to reserve a place.

The problem is not going away. With Port Kembla's renewable energy precinct drawing new investment and the university continuing to attract international students, the region's online footprint will only grow. Residents who shared their stories this week said the same thing, in different words: they felt blindsided, and they felt alone. The infrastructure to help them exists. Reaching it is the hard part.