Girl exposed

16-year-old must do community service as penance

There was a lot of excitement at the Europagymnasium Auhof in Linz when a teenager activated a girls' ranking online.(Bild: Harald Dostal)

The 16-year-old who, following the example of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, used hacked images to create an online "hit list" of 223 schoolgirls at a high school in Linz will probably get away without a trial. The Linz public prosecutor's office explains how this works.

"Our daughter no longer wants to go to school. She is ashamed, feels bullied" - this is what a father from Linz reported after his teenage child was exposed online. "Krone readers are familiar with the case: on the evening of February 25, a website went online with pictures of 223 schoolgirls from the Auhof grammar school, ranked according to their supposed popularity. The girls and young women concerned knew nothing about it, their photos had been stolen from the internet.

A few weeks later, the investigators were able to find out who was behind the campaign: a 16-year-old had created the "hit list" - based on a (bad) idea by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who had once done something similar. The 16-year-old was threatened with up to one year's imprisonment, but it is unlikely that he will even go to trial.