Overview

• Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose photos were included on the site, decried the practice as an attack on women’s dignity in comments to Corriere della Sera.
• Phica posted a homepage notice saying it would close and asked victims to submit links for takedown as postal police began collecting complaints across Italy.
• Active since 2005, the forum reportedly counted about 700,000 users and millions of posts, including a VIP section featuring public figures such as Meloni, Elly Schlein, and other politicians and celebrities.
• Images were scraped from social media and public sources, then altered to sexualize subjects, with some content created as AI deepfakes.
• An online petition calling for the site’s closure surpassed 150,000 signatures as Equality Minister Eugenia Roccella pledged monitoring initiatives, while legal experts warned prosecutions are complicated when operators are based abroad.