They literally told him to use a VPN. He could have connected to any wifi and WhatsApp video called them.

Who said he was sending them to anyone else. "Hi wifey, miss you, thinking of you, heres my boner" "same husband, here is my tits"

Story implies this wasn't the brightest soldier serving His Majesty

I also read stories like this and feel like an alien, because I do have nudes of myself on my phone, some of them unflattering or kinky, and while I don’t want them sent to my family and coworkers (I probably wouldn’t care much about my friends seeing them, to be honest), I wouldn’t be blackmailed about it.

Like, what? Are they truly going to be surprised that I have genitals or sexual interests? It’s a body and some fetishes: everyone has them.

Even if the phone took photos without my knowledge, they have a picture of me masturbating or taking a shit. It’s probably a picture of my face, ankles, or the wall of my bedroom opposite my face, based on how I use my phone during those activities and whether they use the front of back facing camera, but even if they had full body pictures of either… I also have a digestive system and enjoy endorphins, neither of which could possibly come as a surprise to anyone.

And I was raised an American Catholic. I’ve done a lot of work, but I can’t imagine I’m one of the more shameless (in a good way) or sexually liberated people out there.

What’s so scary to people? Is it that they’re masturbating to illegal things or really compromising but not technically illegal things, like stepdaughter porn with an actress who looks like your stepdaughter (just the first totally life destroying but legal thing I could think of)? I don’t intend to victim blame, but I don’t understand how you get blackmailed if you’re not doing something you know is objectively sketchy and not just personal. But even so, if you’re someone who has that kind of sexual secret, you should be the first person to agree to remove your SIM card, no?

That just brings me back to not understanding.

Although, I will concede that with the prevalence of image generating AI, I could see someone taking an innocent picture from my phone and turning it into something very incriminating that might make resisting blackmail harder, but I think I’d probably just hope for the best that others in the picture could corroborate that it never happened and/or that people will be able to determine that it’s not a real picture. Maybe that’s naive, but I also believe the people in my life, being aware that images can be generated and that I went into a situation where blackmail is common enough to need counter strategies, would have enough faith in me to not believe an image that’s out of character and that I deny. Maybe that’s naive, or maybe it’s that I’m a woman and society is more likely to believe me about pictures I say are fake (though maybe I’ve been uncreative- I’ve been assuming the obvious blackmail angle is pedophilia or CSAM, but I don’t know if it would be as easy to convince people in my life that bestiality pictures or something like that were fake- I hope so, because people have seen me around animals, but I can’t be as sure).

A hacked phone can take photos whenever, included while you beat it on the shitter. Without you knowing about it.

I have never taken a nude photo of myself. Never a dick pic either.

It's likely related to SS7

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_System_No._7

Additionally, if you're connected to a evil twin tower, they can hold and decrypt your packets. Especially if you're sending messages over SMS and MMS. Those are trivial to decrypt if they're even encrypted to begin with.