“I felt that my data would be accessible to everyone if I’d reported the case to the police.” This is often repeated by women who have experienced online violence in Egypt, since there is no real guarantee that the personal data of those who report online abuse will not be leaked. The victim and her family may be blackmailed or threatened when the perpetrator learns of her details. This in turn perpetuates the threats and blackmail she has already experienced instead of stopping it.

Nadia (not her real name) found out one day that she had been added to a group sex chat on Facebook called Sex Education. She thought it was a mistake and immediately left the group, deleting the content that had automatically been uploaded to her phone.

She subsequently found herself the victim of blackmailing threats from a person demanding she give him money or he would organize a number of young men to file a lawsuit against her using “false” allegations. What she did not know was that this is one of the most common ways to groom girls online, as cybersecurity expert Ahmed Hijab explained to us. Fake links or offers of free travel require personal data to be entered, which is then used to hack the girl's phone or social media accounts, or to blackmail her into sexual activity - sending photos, turning on her camera, or making videos in her bedroom.

Nadia continued to face threats that her family would be informed, unless she paid the perpetrators the money they demanded. Despite being terrified, she refused to negotiate or give in to blackmail. At the same time she felt unable to officially report the attempted extortion. This is because her personal data would not be protected at any stage after the report was filed with the police - from the beginning of the investigation until the verdict is issued. Nadia said, “I had the feeling my information would be accessible to everyone if I file a report.” The fact that Nadia ignored their threats and they were banned from seeing her, she forced them to leave her alone and look instead for new victims.

Due to persistent pressure from civil society organizations, the parliament approved the Personal Data Protection Law No. 151 of 2020.

This law, however, fails to meet international data protection standards, particularly the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR),  according to a research paper by Maharat, an organisation promoting freedom of expression and media advancement in Lebanon and the Arab world.  It has many loopholes that allow data leaks, putting people at risk, especially women who report online abuse.

Hassan Al-Azhari, a lawyer and executive director of the Technology and Law Community (Masaar), an Egyptian human rights organization  that promotes digital rights and freedoms,  says that the law, for example, fails to protect the privacy of complainants and witnesses in general. He points out that there are many facets  to this protection: preventing data leaks, not prosecuting the victims, give  protection to those whose  lives are under real threat, and redact all or part of the personal information data if a trial goes public.

Al-Azhari said that draft laws to protect complainants and witnesses had been submitted to parliament as far back as2013, including proposals from institutions such as the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the Center For Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance. Even though these draft laws have been debated in parliament more than once, the legislation has yet to be adopted as law.

Al-Azhari underlined the need for a clear regulatory framework for confidentiality, protection, reliability, and non-retaliation to guarantee protection at all stages of the case, from reporting and investigation up to the end of the trial.

The Bent Elnil Foundation notes, in its research paper “Top Secret, that amendments made in September 2020 to the Egyptian Criminal Procedures Law No. 150 of 1950, prohibit the disclosure of information about victims of harassment, rape, and indecent assault, except to "concerned parties." But the amendment does not define what is meant by “concerned parties,” nor does it specify what information can be withheld to protect the complainants or witnesses.

Sextortion of Children

Nada, a young woman in her twenties, remembers that, when she was at secondary school, a teenage university student who lived nearby had a home broadband connection. When she asked him for help with her internet connection, he took her phone under the pretext of connecting it to the network. Later, she was shocked to find photos of herself without a headscarf, which had been stored on her phone, sent to her via WhatsApp. Two years later, she found that her photos had also been sent to people in the neighbourhood.

Nada began receiving sexual related requests. One man asked her to visit him at his house, threatening to send her photos to others if she refused. Although she was afraid, she threatened to report him to the police. Nada knew, however, that she could not do that. “Even though it has been seven years, I can't do a thing, because my father would bury me ,” (alive to punish me), she says.

She points out that telling the police would not help her anyway: “If I reported the boy, his family would definitely come to my family  either for  compromise  or with threats.”

This is what happened to Amira (a pseudonym), who reported a man who was harassing her to the police.He entered her home address and personal details in the police report.

 The next day, Amira found out that the harasser's family had contacted her family and used heavy pressure to try to get them to drop the charges. Though her family insisted at first on her right to pursue the case, they eventually gave in, and Amira withdrew the report. "When I saw that they had come to my address, I knew my information had been leaked due to the report,” she said.

“Ok, I’ll tell you from the beginning how my data was leaked. At that time I honestly was aware enough to know how things would go. But when I saw the family of the man who harassed me at the doorstep of our flat, I said that's because of the official report. It was written down, of course. My dad was there at the time and I wrote down the address where we live...it was also on the ID card, and the address on the ID card is different from the address where we lived, but still they had our address.”

UNESCO defines personal data as “any information pertaining to a particular individual that enables the person to be identified, directly or indirectly, based on that information itself, or through taking reasonable and likely measures.”

Data is also connected to the concept of privacy laid out in Article 17, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Egypt signed in August 1967, and ratified in January 1982, without expressing any reservations on the article.

In 2003, Egypt ratified international conventions, such as the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime of 2000, that guarantee the protection of witnesses, whistleblowers and their families, including the right to change their place of residence. Egypt has not yet passed a single law, however, to protect witnesses and complainants, with the exception of Article 113 bis, of the 1950 Criminal Procedures Law. Nor has it addressed the issue of cybercrime, despite calls from several civil society organizations, like the Centre for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance and the New Woman Foundation.

According to the Masaar research paper, despite the amendments made in 2020 to Law 151, some entities were exempt from the provisions of the law, with no exemption for certain types of personal data held by these ministries. This is a violation of fundamental rights stipulated in Article 57 of the Egyptian Constitution, which protects an individual’s right to privacy.

The Price Paid by the Witness Who exposes the Abuse

Samar El-Shota, a young Egyptian woman in her thirties, found herself witnessing the brutal torture of her neighbour. She filmed it through her window and posted the video on Facebook. The case heavily influenced public opinion, and became known in Egypt as the “Mokattam girl” case. Minutes later, the police arrested the perpetrators, but Samar received threats from the girl that suffered the abuse and torture and her family, which forced Samar to leave her home secretly at night and find somewhere else to live.

Samar is an example of more than 50 percent of women and girls worldwide who have been subjected to "technology-facilitated violence." According to a United Nations report issued on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in November 2024, the prevalence of this type of violence among women ranges from 16 to 58 percent.

Samar decided against formally requesting police protection, because if her new address was  leaked, this would expose her to more threats. “If there was a safer way, I would have reported it myself,” she says.

Samar, Nada, Nadia and others are still waiting for a change in the law to allow victims and survivors of online violence to report it, without legal loopholes causing them even greater problems, including threats to their lives.