Ashley Harrison's company Verified Associates helps women protect their online identities from trolls

It was early 2020, and Ms Harrison was on a high after attending the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Detroit and working at a Hunter law firm and studying law at University of Newcastle (where she obtained a business degree).

"My friend is an influencer and there was kind of like a sex tape that had surfaced, and she had had nudes and illicit images redistributed from her premium [paid per view] OnlyFans account, and the tape had had millions of views on Reddit," Ms Harrison recalls. "I told her that I could either figure out how to do it or put her onto a good copyright lawyer."

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When Ms Harrison asked for advice from a colleague, he suggested she have a shot at solving the issue because she was young and tech-savvy. Encouraged, she took a research deep dive into areas ranging from IP and copyright infringement to complaint channels and managed to have her friend's content removed from Google and Reddit.

"The extent of the leaks were serious ...and it was painstaking because I had to copy and paste every infringement into our notice, but when we got such a great result so quickly I was like, 'Maybe this has legs as a business'," she recalls.

When at least two other celebrity contacts of her initial client asked for her help, Ms Harrison incorporated Verified Associates, which is dedicated to helping protect clients, mostly women, from online abuse and extortion. The company developed a semi-automatic program which searches the web to find leaked content and ensures that stolen images can be removed, protecting the identities of clients.

"We developed a bunch of systems in-house designed for our specific needs, with three parts to it: one is how the client's information is processed, the other is collecting data from Google and sites like Reddit, then there's a part with mass emailing so we can send out freeform [legal] concerns notices at quite a length and speed to hundreds of sites for a client based on the data we have collected, relating to infringing content," she says.

"[The platform] is pretty revolutionary because prior it was hard to collect data needed, you needed every single link that you want to have taken down ... We had to have a way to do it on mass for clients who each had thousands of leaks."

With more than 100 clients, Verified Associates has featured on 60 Minutes locally and the BBC and has celebrity influencers on its books such as Blac Chyna and Tyga.

The bulk of its work relates to the illegal distribution of images and videos, copyright breaches, fraudulent impersonators online and blackmail.

"A fair portion we do is international, we do have domestic clients, and the majority of our Hunter work is impersonation cases on Instagram," Ms Harrison says.

"Primarily we are helping young women, either influencers who are monetising content that is exploited by third parties, or your average young person in Newcastle, Australia or the world who has private images leaked without their permission and it has a serious effect on their life, that's where you get into revenge porn."

Recently recognised as UoN's Student Entrepreneur of the Year, Ms Harrison employs four staff, most of them business or law students from UoN, and all of them women.

"These issues [Verified Associates deals with] are women's issues and require as such a woman's touch," she says.

"It's having a bit of insight in thinking,'How would I feel if I was in that position, there's a lot of empathy that is needed."

Ms Harrison says it was a common misconception that anyone who put information "out there" was fair game.

"On Instagram, when a person takes a selfie they own the copyright, when they post it it's just an extension of their copyright and a lot of people don't realise that," she says.

"They think, 'My account is public and I can't do anything about it', but that's what people want them to think, that's how the culture can thrive, but people can do something about it."

Ms Harrison says those behind the aggressive leaking are "much more average than you think".

"They are not in an underground bunker in the dark, the average person can be male or female who on principal doesn't think they should pay for porn ... then reposts things," she says.

She says the company aims to be affordable and does a lot of pro bono work for private individuals relating to revenge porn "because we don't think people should have to remortgage their house to deal with it."

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